


As I went down in the river to pray

by Minim



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Family Secrets, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Murder Mystery, Past Lives, Redemption, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-14 22:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2205186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minim/pseuds/Minim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hot summer in the small town of Fairview two people die and the Milton brothers are the only ones who know what really happened. They make a promise to each other never to reveal the terrible events they witnessed. Eight years later Castiel returns to Fairview running from the new life that fell apart around him. Now he has to try and rebuild without letting the distant past that haunts him come back and destroy him. </p>
<p>Dean ends up in Fairview because it’s as far away from his screwed up life as he can get. All he wants is a quiet life. But he quickly becomes fixated on solving the mystery behind the horrific events of all those years ago. With a mystery to solve, a friendship with Castiel to negotiate and the realisation that your problems catch up with you much quicker than you expect Dean’s life ends up being anything but quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

Fairview was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. It had sprung up round a wide dusty road that had led somewhere important once upon a time. No one could remember what that important thing had been and these days the road just led to a few outlying farms and then gradually disappeared, consumed by the dense scrub land on the far side of the town. Nevertheless, there must have been something out there once upon a time because there had been sufficient traffic to convince someone to set up a small general store by the road side to provide for weary travellers. And, somehow, that prompted a few intrepid souls to make their homes in what must then have been utterly inhospitable territory. The one general store had been joined by a cluster of cafes, restaurants and other small independent service providers that were attracted by the new arrivals. It wouldn’t have lasted very long had not a shoe manufacturer snapped up some cheap land nearby and built a factory which attracted even more people to the area. For a while, thirty or so years, Fairview had been a thriving industrial town. The optimistic store owners who had set up in the early days had all done good business in the factory’s glory days and the town had been the one lively hub in that expanse of wilderness. Those days were long gone. The factory had closed, the businesses had declined, people had moved away and Fairview shrunk and sank into sleepy oblivion. Now it was a way point on a road going nowhere that was only really concerned with its own comings and goings and ignored the world thoroughly.

That was exactly why Dean Winchester had moved there. He had driven away from his old life and taken every turning that to him represented the road less travelled until he had found himself several days and a few thousand miles away sitting at the point where the Fairview road became impassable. The rich, dark leafed vegetation that surrounded the road further up had wilted steadily till all that was left were pale, dry bushes that scraped the sandy soil with straw hands searching for moisture and nutrients in a half-hearted fashion and thorny bushes whose twisted limbs were cracked and pealing like bones left out to weather in the sun for generations. This was all that stretched out before him, an arid desert. As he looked, it seemed to him that he was at a crossroads between the real, solid world of the living and something else. Something less definite, darker something that had more in common with the dead than the living. There was something very appealing about the distant horizon, shimmering with heat, tricking his eyes so it looked like there was a road. A road that would take him somewhere unknown. Somewhere new, somewhere old. 

After sitting for what felt like a lifetime, he’d turned around and driven back into Fairview. As he drove it was like waking up. He couldn’t have said what thoughts had passed through his mind whilst sitting there, out in the desert. He’d felt drained and yet oddly calm. It was as though sitting, staring into the distance, some sort of internal resolution had begun. The feeling acted as a personal vindication. He had done the right thing in abandoning his past he was sure of it now. Sure in a way that he hadn’t been before.

On the edge of Fairview he’d found a dilapidated one story house for rent. He’d been admiring a large, stately, colonial style house that was set back from the road and surrounded by a sweeping drive accessorised with wild flowers when he spotted it. It was matching in architecture to the parent building but it was nowhere near as grand. It was close to the road and so over grown that at first he thought it was just a shed. 

The house was rented to him by a tiny wizened old lady who introduced herself as Aunt Martha and sulked if he tried to call her anything else. The small house which Dean rented had been built in the grounds of her far larger house for the use of her son. However, he had moved away when the town had fallen into decline. Martha’s husband had died and she had been left with more house and more grounds than she could possibly maintain. She had placed the For Rent sign in the window so long ago that when Dean had arrived it had been barely visible under the layer of dust and grime. The wood was rotten, the paint peeling, the windows cracked and the surrounding foliage had grown up to such an extent that in some places it was hard to tell where the plants ended and the building began.

When Dean had knocked on the door it had taken Martha so long to open it that he had been on the brink of giving up. Up close the general sense of neglect of the place had made Dean suspect that it might no longer be lived in. When she had finally opened the door she had only slid it open a crack and had looked out at him suspiciously. She was tiny and hunched with age, her skin leathery and hanging loose around her bones. Despite this he could see that her hair was still immaculate and there were touches of rouge on her cheeks. Her eyes, though sunken in her face, were bright blue and sparkled with intelligence. 

He’d explained clumsily about his interest in the house to rent. He’d been painfully conscious of the fact that he hadn’t washed or shaved or slept in several days. His eyes were bloodshot, his face covered in rough sand paper stubble, his clothes rumpled and his hair was wild. He hadn’t been surprised that she hadn’t opened the door any wider as he talked. Dean was not in the habit of throwing himself on the mercy of others and was also increasingly conscious of the fact that this was what he was doing. He’d trailed off slowly as her suspicious look had not waned. He’d run his hand over his face, sworn under his breath at himself and stomped back down the steps away from the door.

“You can have the place for two fifty a month.” The sweet sound of salvation rasped out in the quarrelsome, high strung tones of the elderly. 

And so Fairview had become his home. Well, home might have been a stretch. It had become a port in a storm. Dean had thrown himself into the restoration of his new resting place with such gusto that he had impressed Martha to such an extent that his first job in Fairview had been as an odd job man tidying up her house and grounds. She was stubborn, fractious and demanding. She had ordered him around the place like an aristocrat. Which, Dean reasoned, she may well have been once upon a time. He hadn’t minded, particularly after she hadn’t throw him out when it transpired that he only had $180 in his pocket as opposed to the agreed $250, and had quickly become fond of the stubborn old lady. 

For almost a year Dean remained safe and hidden in the sleepy arms of Fairview. After initial suspicions he became an established figure in the town. People didn’t stare any more when he walked down the main street, nor did they twitch their curtains and observe him suspiciously as he walked down their streets. He was greeted by name in the diner and the waitresses had his standard order memorised. 

He’d started out doing odd jobs for the local mechanic. He was an older man with a grizzly beard and a hard worldly expression. His name was Bobby and he treated every one with a gruff aggression that was designed to keep everyone at arm’s length. It hadn’t worked and he was treasured by the whole town, though expressing that to him would have been suicidal. His acceptance of Dean had gone a long way towards improving his position. When Bobby had been injured and unable to work Dean had practically taken over the garage. And so, his place in Fairview had been assured. But even in Fairview, the winds of change do occasionally blow.

One evening, he was standing on the street with Martha while she told him what she wanted doing with some overgrown bushes by the street. The sun was just threatening to set and the air was warm. Martha couldn’t decide whether she wanted Dean to trim the bushes or to remove them entirely. The only sound in the air was the rustle of the leaves as Martha pushed the tangled branches backwards and forwards as she surveyed them. So Dean was very aware of the approaching car long before it arrived. 

They were right on the far edge of town. Not many people ventured out that far unless they had business at any of the two distant farms or with them. Very rarely you would find people heading out that way to hike or camp because they fancied spending some time in the wilderness. When Dean saw that the approaching car was compact, clean and clearly built for city driving that was what Dean assumed the occupants were here for. Having established that, he paid the car little attention as it passed. He wasn’t so indoctrinated into small town living yet that he was suspicious of every outsider and Martha was far too occupied with her bushes to be interested. So the car passed them by and Dean didn’t really give it much thought. Just a passing glance.

“I’ll have them out,” Martha said, with finality. She looked up at him with her blue eyes that were still bright and sharp despite their setting in a face that was so wrinkled with age that she looked every one of her 86 years. 

“You’re not gonna change your mind again are you?” Dean asked gruffly. Thinking back to the memorable day when he’d removed an apple tree only for Martha to change her mind. She had given him considerable short shrift as a result and refused to acknowledge any responsibility in the incident.

She looked at him sourly now, “Don’t get smart with me boy,” she said stiffly, well aware of what he was referencing. 

Dean chuckled and looked around at the failing light, “I’ll take them out tomorrow,” he said. “Before work.”

She huffed and turned to shuffle her way back into the house. Dean returned to his home. And out in the woods the occupant of the bright, shiny city car was arriving at his destination.

-

Fairview was a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. That was exactly why Castiel was moving back there. His family had lived there for generations making an austere living faming the land a short distance from the town itself. The land out this way hadn’t been overly fertile when the lands were originally settled and poor management had left them barren and close to useless relatively quickly. Consequently, the several hundred acres that had made the family rich to begin with, struggled to support them in later years. More and more the family had to turn to other industries to support themselves and it hadn’t been easy. Castiel’s father had been the last true farmer in the family and after he was gone and Castiel’s Uncle took over the property the active farm had disappeared. Castiel and his brothers had all drifted away to make lives in other parts of the world and Fairview had faded in their memories. 

It was odd then that when Castiel had been faced with the need to flee that Fairview was the first thing to pop into his mind. As he had climbed into the car and started the long drive home he had tried to picture the place. It was all very vague now. It had been more than 8 years, Castiel had been 16 when he left, and his memories seemed to have condensed themselves into a series of general impressions. He could remember the smell of the rain on the fields, the texture of the wooden post on the porch under his hand as he swung out of the doorway, the taste of the pears in the orchard and the sunrises by the river. It was all very romanticised. He knew there was a lot more to it than that. He knew the reality was a lot harsher. But as he drove he was driving towards the romantic image in his mind.

The reality was, as always and as he expected, quite different. He arrived back in Fairview in the early evening. The light was soft and the air was clear. There was so much that hadn’t changed. The shops on the main street were the same. The houses were the same. Even old Aunt Martha was the same. Castiel saw her, looking not much older than when he had last seen her, standing outsider her house talking with a young man. He didn’t recognise the man, but he was heartened to see that Martha still seemed to be going strong. All of this lured him into a false sense of security that he would return to something that was familiar. 

Those illusions were quickly shattered as he reached the turning that would take him down to the old farm. In Castiel’s last memory of it, while the road had been a dirt track, it had been a well trodden dirt track. The earth was compacted and the edges were clear, the weeds kept well at bay. Now, had he not know that there was meant to be a turning there he would probably have missed it. The path was overgrown with weeds and it didn’t look like anyone regularly used it. The surrounding trees which had been kept well pruned in the past were now overgrown, scattering leaves all over the path as well as dead branches which cracked and snapped under the slow moving wheels of his car.

Overgrown and dilapidated turned out to be the running theme as Castiel drove slowly and carefully along the once familiar road. There were hints here and there of the place he remembered and they grew stronger as the house drew ever nearer. Stronger and stronger until there the house was. For a moment it looked like it always had. It was a square, two storey farmhouse standing solid and confident in the clearing. The gables were sharply pointed giving a sense of height and making it look grander than the average agricultural building. There was a sense of the gothic about the structure which was muted by the whitewash on the wood and the pale blue accents on the door and window frames. At least, that was what it once had been. 

Now, the walls were more grey than white and the wood around the windows was so ragged you wouldn’t have been able to tell that they had been blue. The house wasn’t so isolated anymore either. The plants were encroaching on its space and the yard was cluttered with rusted chunks of metal that might have been farming equipment once upon a time. As Castiel got out of the car and walked slowly towards the door he could see more clearly how the building was falling into disrepair. There were cracks in some of the windows, some of the wooden cladding had fallen away and there was a distinct tilt to the gables that hadn’t been there before. 

He climbed the three steps that led to the door with a certain amount of trepidation. The steps felt soft underfoot and creaked and squelched unhealthily. Castiel was sure that they could collapse at any moment. The ancient screen door hung on one hinge, the netting had peeled back and was stiffly curled. The once solid front door wasn’t properly closed. It swung slightly on rusty hinges, batted to and fro by the warm summer air. Castiel reached out to still it, then pushed it fully open, very gently, so that he could step inside.

It was silly but he kept his eyes closed and, just with the driveway, for a moment he could lie to himself and think that it was just as it had been before. In his mind’s eye the floorboards were neatly polished and the furniture, while basic, was clean and neat. In the hallway, there was a jumble of shoes in a box by the door and there were coats hung precariously one on top of each other on the hooks above it. When you stepped in, you would hear the conflicting sounds of various types of music blaring from upstairs overlapping with the sound of the television from the front room. Someone would probably be cooking in the kitchen and the smells would greet you as you came in. That was the world that Castiel would have been stepping into, eight years ago.

It was nothing like that now of course. There were no shoes and no coats. The dresser that normally stood in the hallway was gone and leaves and dust mingled on the now dull floor. The usual mess of post that had been delivered before the postman realised that it was pointless choked the first few steps, much of it now crinkled with damp. The smell of abandonment lingered on the air, decay. Through the archway that took you into the sitting room Castiel could see that the only furniture that remained here was a battered sofa. It wasn’t even the one that Castiel remembered from his childhood. Nothing lived here now except for dust, cobwebs and the inevitable mice, rats and cockroaches. 

Castiel climbed the stairs, following the familiar path to his bedroom, the first door on the left. He didn’t expect to see anything other than an empty room this time and he wasn’t disappointed when he pushed the door open. The room was totally bare. The only traces that this had ever been his bedroom were the scuff marks against the wall which showed where his bed had once stood. Against the opposite wall there were matching scuff marks from where Gabriel’s bed had been and through the dust he could see the burn mark on the floor from Gabriel’s ill-fated experimentation with smoking.

He smiled sadly to see it. He bent down to touch it as though touching it would in some way connect him to the past. The past seemed so much simpler now in comparison to what life had recently thrown at him. Though that really wasn’t saying much. Despite the dusty, dirty floor and the fact that he was still wearing a crisp blue suit Castiel lowered himself to the ground and sat with his back against the wall staring vaguely into the distance as his hand still stroked the burn mark.

After so many years, he was back.

-

Dean woke up when the sun slithered its way through the curtains early the next morning. He groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. No matter how thick the curtains he hung were, the sun always seemed to find its way through nooks and crannies to wake Dean far earlier than he wanted. The sun explored the room, the shafts spreading out like tentative fingers. They found the small pile of beer cans half in and half out of the bin, a discovery which went half way to explaining why Dean was finding it so hard to get out of bed. Well. To get off the sofa, which was where he had fallen asleep the previous night. Despite his best efforts, Dean rarely managed to drag himself to bed in the evenings. His mouth was dry and he felt even more tired than he had when had had fallen asleep. Half way through a bottle of beer he noted, as he saw that the bottle which must have rolled from his fingers as he fell asleep had chugged its contents across the floor. 

Yawning, he pushed himself off the sofa and padded into the kitchen. He pulled open the cupboards, checked in the fridge and confirmed his suspicions that there was no food available. The fridge presented a sorry sight with only some left over beer and two old out of date ready meals. The cupboards weren’t much better. A bag of pasta, some left over rice and some sprouting potatoes were hardly a recipe for a healthy breakfast. He made a mental note to go shopping, just as he did every morning, before settling for a liquid breakfast of coffee. At least he had coffee. Though, for a moment he seriously considered a liquid breakfast of another sort. However, a glance at the watch which told him that he needed to be at work in under an hour quickly put that idea to bed. 

He took his mug of coffee outside, hoping that the cooler morning air might wake him up and sober him up a little. He leant against the newly refurbished bannister of the small porch and felt the old familiar craving for a cigarette that was always awakened when he drank too much. He sipped his coffee and tried to ignore it. As part of his new life in Fairview he had decided that he could only keep one of his vices and he had chosen alcohol. Health and morality aside he couldn’t have afforded the damn things as well as beer and Dean had long ago lost the ability to get through an evening without at least one drink. 

Having felt the cool morning breeze on his cheeks and consumed enough coffee to start the transformation from half-drunk zombie into functioning member of society, Dean returned to the house to finish the procedure. As he stared into the slightly tarnished mirror of the bathroom cabinet, Dean marvelled again at how he managed to abuse his body night after night and still get up in the morning looking reasonably respectable. His brown eyes, which managed to look green in some lights, were clear and steady. There were no dark circles under them and his stubbly cheeks looked intentional rather than unkempt. He ran his fingers through his dark hair, thankful as always that his hair seemed resistant to growth. He looked for all intents and purposes like a man who had a steady hand on his life. Well, we all know that looks can be deceiving. 

As Dean walked out of his front door having drained the last of his coffee and resolving to grab something to eat in town even if it made him late for work, he noticed again the clean city car driving along the road. He didn’t catch sight of the driver, but thought vaguely to himself that the occupants must have found camping out in the desert wilderness a little more challenging than expected and were heading home early. It raised a brief chuckle and by the time he was in town he’d forgotten about it.

Bobby glared at Dean when he strolled into the workshop fifteen minutes after his scheduled arrival time chewing on the remains of a breakfast sandwich and swigging at his second coffee of the day. 

“Nice of you to join us,” he groused, extracting his hands from the belly of the car on which he was working. Dean didn’t comment. “I’m not supposed to be doing this stuff anymore,” Bobby grumbled, wiping his newly freed hands clean from grease on a square of cloth that was so dirty the whole procedure seemed slightly counterproductive. “Strictly paperwork, that’s my job.”

“Oh come on Bobby, you know you love to get your hands dirty every once in a while,” Dean replied with a grin.

In answer Bobby threw the greasy cloth at Dean’s face, “I am your boss. I can fire you, you know.”

“Yeah but who’d do all the dirty work then?” Dean said smoothly, having successfully caught the cloth without dropping his coffee and was feeling quite pleased with himself. 

Bobby muttered some choice words under his breath before pointing at the car, “Engines making a heck of a noise. Get on it. They’re coming back for it at one.” And with that he disappeared into his office, slamming the door behind him so that the blind rattled as if punctuating the order. 

Dean chuckled to himself as he got started on the car. It would probably be a simple job and result in him advising the owner to spend money on replacing parts that would make his fix more permanent. The owner would reject spending more money, take the car away and then be surprised when they had to bring it back in a few months. 

Bobby’s workshop was a nice place to work. It wasn’t particularly large, having room only to work on one car at a time and storage for another two. It was also on the dilapidated side. Storage for two other cars meant that there was a rickety structure fashioned out of corrugated iron tacked onto the side of the building. The rusty bands of metal that held it together had in places detached themselves from the panels themselves which often caused people to contemplate with bewilderment how the thing was still standing. Bobby’s approach to organising the workshop itself had been to pile tools precariously on the tables that stood against the workshop’s three walls in whatever order he happened to use them. Should a valuable tool then become buried, he retrieved it by simply sweeping the pile off the table and onto the floor. The pile then reformed as he selected the tools one by one from the floor and returned them to the surface. As a result, chaos, was probably the best way to describe the place. Since starting work there, Dean had been slowly introducing order to the proceedings but that only lasted until Bobby took over the work again. Though he had only been fifteen minutes late to work, in that time Bobby had reduced the workshop to its original chaos and Dean paid for his lateness by having to spend most of the morning sorting the tools out again. 

He was in the delicate process of crawling around under a loaded trestle table at the back of the room in search of his favourite wrench when he became aware that someone was watching him. He could hear suppressed giggles and was not in the least surprised when he emerged, red faced and sweating, from under the table to see a diminutive blonde girl standing there with her arms folded and grinning from ear to ear.

“You look ridiculous,” she said, bluntly.

“What do you want Jo?” he said, equally blunt, as he climbed to his feet, wrench in hand. 

“Well that’s nice,” said the girl called Jo in injured tones, flicking her lightly curled blonde hair over one shoulder, “I pay you a visit to keep you company and you’re just rude.”

“You’re not company. You’re a pain in the ass,” Dean retorted. Jo was the daughter of the local bar owner. He’d met her not long after his arrival when he hadn’t cared about drowning his sorrows in public yet. He’d treated her as badly as he’d treated everyone else but, rather than be repulsed by him as he intended, Jo had been intrigued and Dean had gained a very vocal shadow. 

Dean pointedly returned his full concentration to the car and ignored Jo’s presence. Utterly unphased by the rejection, Jo cleared a seat for herself on one of the side tables and pulled herself up on to it. She sat, swinging her legs playfully and watched Dean work. Dean wasn’t exactly comfortable with her there. She was too bright and clean for those surroundings. She stood out and drew attention to herself and made it hard to concentrate. Dean had not for one moment found her remotely attractive, even if he had, the knowledge that she was barely nineteen would have put any amorous thoughts to sleep instantly. Dean didn’t like them young. So she wasn’t distracting for those most base of reasons. She was distracting because she didn’t look like she fit and because, while Dean’s intentions might have been totally honourable, hers certainly weren’t. 

“If it’s still rattling, you might wanna look if anything’s loose underneath as well.” 

Oh yeah, that was the other problem with Jo. She fancied herself a bit of an expert on most things up to and including car maintenance. Dean would readily admit that she knew more than the average young girl about these things but she didn’t know nearly as much as she thought she did and her constant interruptions were another of the reasons why Dean found her visits more difficult than anything else. 

“Oh come on, are you just gonna ignore me?”

“I have work to do,” he said gruffly.

“You trying to do an impression of Bobby?” she mimicked him “I have work to do!” And pulled a ridiculous grumpy face that looked more like a duck than anything else.

“Seriously Jo,” he snapped. “I’m already behind and Bobby is pissed at me so if I don’t finish I’ll be in serious trouble. So can you just…” he made a shooing motion with his hands.

 

This time the hurt expression that passed across her face was more genuine. “You’re such an ass sometimes,” she said. 

“For the love of…” the office door swung open and a very annoyed looking Bobby stomped out, “I can’t concentrate with you two jabbering away in here,” he snapped. He glowered at Jo grimly, his beard bristling with irritation, “What do you want?” he demanded.

Jo smiled at him sweetly. Unlike Dean’s nastiness, Bobby’s had no effect on her. She knew the man far too well for that. Beloved as he was in the town generally, Dean had quickly come to realise that his connection with Jo and her mother Ellen was particularly strong. Jo had never said anything explicitly, and Bobby certainly hadn’t and never would, but Dean had seen enough to know that Bobby was something of a surrogate father and husband to them both. He still remembered the first time that Bobby had seen Jo trailing after him down the road outside the bar. Bobby had jabbed a finger so pointedly into Dean’s chest while warning him that harming Jo would be suicidal that Dean had carried a bruise for almost a week. 

“Mom sent me over to tell you that one of the Milton’s is back in town,” she said. 

Bobby pulled a face that was half confusion and half annoyance, “Milton?” he repeated. 

“Yeah. She said you’d want to know.” Jo paused, “That mean much to you?”

Dean had the strange impression that Bobby was shocked by the information. He couldn’t hae told you what it was about his expression that made him think that, but he was sure that the name meant something to him. Though he was hiding it well.

“You sure she said Milton?” Bobby repeated.

“Yeah.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Bobby muttered, mostly to himself, seeming to forget his audience for a few moments.

“You alright Bobby?” Jo asked carefully.

“Huh?” her words jolted Bobby out of his thoughts. 

“Are you ok? It’s not bad news is it? Mom just saw some guy walking down the road and told me to come and tell you…”

“Of course I’m fine,” said Bobby, unconvincingly.

“Who is it?” Dean asked curiously. 

“No one,” said Bobby, “It’s no one. Now,” he shook himself and then glared at Dean, “I’m not paying you to stand around all day. That still needs finishing by one. I want to see it done when I get back.” And with a curt nod to Jo, he strode out of the workshop and walked off in the direction of the bar.

Jo and Dean exchanged a glance. 

“That was weird,” said Dean.

“Yeah,” Jo seemed genuinely unsettled by Bobby’s strange reaction to the name. 

“Any idea what that was about?” Dean asked. Dean had enough skeletons in his closet to know when someone was being forced to deal with some of their own and he was curious. He wasn’t curious because he was an idle gossip. He was curious because he had learnt at a very young age that it paid to know things about the people around you. Bobby was definitely an ally, might even be a friend and that meant that he was close enough to Dean that his skeletons could have an impact on Dean’s life. Dean was here because he was done with his demons and he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of being sucked into dealing with someone else’s.

Jo shook her head, “I have no idea. I’ve never heard the name before and the guy just looked like a regular guy…” she trailed off then shrugged, “Probably just someone from one of the old families and they’re worried about what they’ll want to do with the land out there.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of Martha’s house and the old farms. 

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. That made sense. The townspeople were forever nervous about the idea of developers coming in and buying up the large swathes of land that surrounded the derelict farms. They were all extremely hostile to the idea that change should come. Personally Dean didn’t think they had anything to worry about. No one in their right mind would come out here to find land to build on. But it made sense that the older townspeople would worry about what it would mean if one of those land owners were to come back. 

Jo seemed satisfied with her explanation and her smile returned, “Well, I can’t hang around here all day. You’ll have to live without me.” And she followed in Bobby’s footsteps, twirling out of the door with her hands tucked seductively into the back pockets of her jeans. She even winked over her shoulder at him as she strutted away. 

Dean shook his head and looked at the grimy blue framed clock that hung on the wall above the office door. 12:00. He’d be damned if he’d be able to finish the car by one. With a sigh he bent back over the engine and prayed fervently that his morning would be subject to no further distractions. Within ten minutes the name Milton had already slipped out of his mind.

-

Castiel had woken up with a stiff neck and a stiff back and a sore head to the realisation that he had fallen asleep leaning against the wall in his old bedroom. He must have been more exhausted than he thought. He clambered awkwardly to his feet. In the thinner whiter light of the mid-morning the room looked colder and more unwelcoming than it had the previous evening when soft summer sunshine had leant a tinge of romance to the place. Castiel’s mouth was dry and there was a horrible taste in the back of his throat that made him feel sick. 

He went to the window and tried to open it. The wood had warped over the years of heat and cold and wet and creaked out its protest as it inched its way upwards inch by inch before tearing upwards with an unsettling rattle. Castiel hadn’t expected the sudden upwards momentum and his knuckles cracked painfully against the wooden frame. Shaking them and wincing he stuck his head outside and breathed deeply of the clean, fresh air that was still tinged with the cold of morning. No sounds assaulted his ears from outside except the gentle rustle of leaves in the breeze. Castiel breathed in and out and could almost feel the revitalising effect of the country air. The sense of suffocation that he had so often experienced in recent years seemed to be lifting slightly. 

After a few moments, thirst drove Castiel away from the window. He went downstairs to the kitchen. Though he had been in the house less than twelve hours, he automatically missed out the penultimate step on the stairs. It creaked. 

The kitchen was as empty as everywhere else and several of the cupboard doors were hanging on their hinges. The window above the sink had been smashed at some point and there were still shards of glass lying on the floor in front of it. As he turned the rusted taps and listened to the creak of ancient plumbing for the first time Castiel wondered about his Uncle. He hadn’t really expected him to still be there. His cousin, Balthazar, had made enough references in their conversations to his father’s exploits in other parts of the world for Castiel to know that he couldn’t expect that. He had expected a certain amount of decay as well, houses did decay when they were not in constant use, especially big houses that were occupied by only one person. However, Castiel had not expected the place to be in this state of abandonment. He had expected his Uncle to still be taking on some kind of custodial role. Stopping in every now and again. He hadn’t expected all the furniture to be cleared out…

The plumbing groaned but nothing but a thin green sludge came from the tap. The supply had probably been cut off years ago. If Castiel wanted a drink he was going to have to go out to the car.

Ignoring the sentimental side of things, technically, since the day that Zac had turned 18 the house had belonged to him. And then as each Milton sibling had reached the age of majority they had taken a share of the property. Their father had left the estate in equal parts to them with their Uncle as custodian until they matured. None of the Milton siblings had shown any interest in the place and as such the house had been, essentially, their Uncles. Regardless, the property and all its contents was legally theirs. Castiel imagined Zac’s reaction to the news that their Uncle had evidently sold up and moved on. He wouldn’t be pleased. There surely hadn’t been that much money to be made from the furniture, but it was the principle that would grate. For a moment, Castiel contemplated communicating the fact to Zac just so he could enjoy watching his annoyance but he wasn’t really interested in encouraging contact with his family so he shelved that idea.

Inspection of his car revealed that his supplies consisted of a large bottle of water and a bag of nuts. If he was going to make living here work the first thing that Castiel needed was some food. Then he needed to investigate how practical getting the house reconnected to the utilities was going to be. He desperately needed a shower. 

His hand slipped into the pocket of his tan trench coat and he turned his wallet over, fingers slipping inside to stroke the smooth plastic that it contained. He didn’t think that anyone would go to such extreme lengths as to try and use his bank records to trace him so there would be no harm in continuing to use his existing bank accounts. 

In his mind he wrote a list. A plan of action. Step one, head to the motel that stood on the other side of town so that he could get a room and have a shower. Step two, go into town and find some food. Step three, start on the process of making the house basically liveable again. As he climbed into the car to enact his plan he glanced at his phone. Eight text messages, eleven missed calls. He turned it off and added a new item to his list, buy new phone. 

How a motel managed to maintain enough business to justify staying open in an area as remote as this one Castiel had no idea. Visitors evidently weren’t too rare an occurrence as the bored receptionist handed keys over while hardly glancing up from her magazine. Castiel noted that several other keys were missing from the peg board behind the desk as well. He remembered that even back when he was a child and poverty was not quite the same problem that it was now there were people who had lived in the motel purely because it was cheaper than rent. Perhaps visitors were uncommon but the motel was full anyway. Fairview was decaying in more ways than just physical.

Castiel tried hard not to turn his nose up at the basic accommodation on offer. Years of living in the city had spoilt him. He hadn’t grown up in luxury, far from it, so he was embarrassed by how quickly he had adjusted to wealth. The carpet may have been threadbare, the mattress limp and floppy, the covers old fashioned and a little greasy but it was generally clean and while there was mould in the corners of the bathroom walls it was an old building and that was to be expected. At least the water was hot, the towels were soft and he had packed toiletries before his hasty departure so he could enjoy a shower that was close to the quality of those he enjoyed back home. 

Feeling more human, Castiel returned to Fairview’s main thoroughfare in search of food. He parked in the same side street that he and his brothers had always used as teenagers. He was stopped in his tracks by the sight of the tree into which Michael had driven the family car the first time he’d been trusted with the car alone. The smile the sight produced was a curious mix of happy nostalgia at the memory and sadness at the fact that the mischievous Michael who had stood in the kitchen trying to explain to their Uncle why it wasn’t his fault the car was damaged bore little resemblance to the Michael of the present. 

The broad street on which he’d parked the car was at the town’s most easterly edge. It formed the spine of what was left of Fairview’s industrial district. Practically that meant that it was home to a couple of small dilapidated warehouses surrounded by rusted fences and gates wrapped with padlocks that looked as though they hadn’t been opened in years. The only place with any life in this area was the Roadhouse. This was one of Fairview’s two drinking establishments. It sat, in its own dusty compound that resisted the encroachment of the surrounding industry so strongly that it looked like it belonged somewhere else, out in the open, and not in this built up area at all. In Castiel’s day it had had a terrible reputation. It was where the lower end of Fairview’s society congregated. There wasn’t much crime in Fairview but the little that did exist was often focused around the Roadhouse. As a result it was strongly attractive to the teenage population of the town who favoured it for their first drinking experiments. It helped that the owner, Ellen, had a tendency to turn a blind eye to the presence of underage drinkers. Castiel had been no exception frequenting the place with his brothers first and then, as they drifted away, by himself. 

As he walked past, he surveyed the building with a wary eye. It didn’t seem to have changed at all, though at this point in the day it was quiet. Resting. Waiting. Preparing for the evening when loud music would pour out despite the shuttered windows best efforts to keep it in. Dark shapes would linger outside, the dim flares of cigarettes the only clue to their location alongside the murmur of voices and the thin ripple of laughter. It was all achingly familiar. Castiel hadn’t really considered how intense the trip down memory lane would be, but it was like every aspect of the place held something for him and the Roadhouse wasn’t the least of it. 

Just as he had turned his head away and was passing by, Castiel thought he saw the door open. Not wanting to get caught in conversation with anyone who might recognise him just yet Castiel hunched his shoulders, put his head down and hurried on. To his relief, there was no shout from behind and nothing to indicate that he had been spotted. For a moment he contemplated waiting a moment and then turning back and returning to the farm but a warning growl from his stomach warned him that that would not be a welcome decision. 

The buildings might not have changed much in eight years but the people had. As he walked up the main street towards the diner he passed several people going about their daily business but couldn’t have named a single one of them more specifically than a street where they lived or a place where they had worked. Some of the faces were familiar. There was something in the eyes of a well-dressed gentleman in his 60’s that suggested to Castiel that he should know him and he half suspected that the young dark haired woman pushing a gurgling baby in an old fashioned pram had been at school with him. Evidently, he had changed enough as well, both of them glanced up at him curiously as they passed him, sizing up the stranger, but there was no recognition from either of them. 

When Castiel had been young, one of the diner’s permanent fixtures had been a cheeky dark haired beauty called Meg. She had tormented all of Fairview’s younger generations to such an extent that they always set foot in the place with a sense of trepidation. As he pushed open the door, Castiel saw her again, draped across the counter with a broad smile on her face as she flirted shamelessly with whoever was seated at the counter. He could still see, in his mind’s eye, the flick of her hair as she looked up to see who was coming in and the twist of her mouth which expressed her disgust at the arrival of someone as uninteresting as Castiel. 

She wasn’t there of course. Again the ghosts dissolved and the new reality replaced it. The woman who was standing at the counter was in her late forties probably with curly motherly hair and the prim uniform that Meg had always refused to wear. She was standing well back from the counter, leaning against the back wall and chatting brightly with a woman of a similar age who was standing just in front of the door, poised to go. 

Maggie Stark. Castiel’s mind supplied instantly. Maggie was the wife of Don Stark, the man who owned the general store. She hadn’t changed a bit. Her dark blonde hair was still immaculately set, her dress still timelessly fashionable. Her sharp eyes, dark and calculating, had always registered every coming and going of Fairview and Castiel instantly abandoned all hope of passing through unnoticed.

Maggie, upon seeing him, completed an almost comedic double take. She cocked her head to one side, mouth open in surprise but stretching into a broad smile.

“Well well well,” she said, putting her hand on her hip, “Milton…Ca…Ca…” she fumbled over his name.

“Castiel,” he supplied reluctantly.

“Yes of course! Castiel. Castiel Milton. Well, what a surprise! I don’t think anyone expected to see any of you back here again. Not after, well, not after all of that awkward business.” She stopped and looked at Castiel carefully. He didn’t react to the jibe. “Back on business or…?”

“Yes,” said Castiel. Then, knowing that Maggie was not the type to be content with such an abrupt answer he added, “Regarding the house.”

Maggie nodded, visibly storing the information away for future use. Castiel was certain that most of the town would know about his return by evening. He wasn’t thrilled at the idea but at the same time he had been expecting it. Fairview wasn’t a transient kind of place, to hope that he would have gone unrecognised would have been ridiculous. Perhaps the looks he had received while walking up the street had been looks of recognition…

Maggie was speaking and he forced himself to focus, “Well I’ll let you get to your breakfast,” she was saying, “It’s so good to see you.” And with a squeeze to his arm that made Castiel’s skin crawl she was gone.

He retreated quickly to a booth in the corner of the room. The motherly waitress was called Beryl and she opted to wait on him herself rather than dispatch her young assistant. Dark haired, grumpy, tom boyish, so like Meg but so different as well. The name tag that she was trying to hide with her shirt read Krissie. She smiled darkly at Castiel as Beryl fussed around him, chattering endlessly. For all she seemed to be delighting in Castiel’s suffering under Beryl’s over attentive hand, she accepted the payment that he pushed at her when Beryl ducked into the back for a moment without a word and drew no attention to his hasty escape. 

Castiel felt like a criminal as he hurried back up the street towards his car. He kept his head lowered and hunched his shoulders to obscure his features. The encounter with Maggie Stark had been brief but had shaken him badly. How could he have been so stupid and think that Fairview had changed enough for him to fly under the radar? Here of all places! And the reference to the ‘awkward business.’ He hadn’t forgotten it, of course he hadn’t, but it had been so long since someone had connected it with him that he had almost disconnected it from himself. He should have known that the residents of Fairview wouldn’t have forgotten.

The mission to get the house reconnected to water and electricity was becoming more urgent. Castiel wasn’t going to venture back into Fairview in the near future if he could help it. There was a dusty and depressing mall located about 45 minute’s drive away. He would go there, buy a new phone and some basic supplies before returning. One thing he was still certain of was that, at the house at least, no one was going to bother him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

For the first time in a while, Dean added some basic food items to his basket on his regular trip to buy beer and coffee. As he threw the plastic bag containing bread, chips, peanut butter and a pack of frozen burgers onto the back seat of the car a voice flashed through his mind. Disapproving. 

_Is that all you’re going to eat? It’s junk!_

He suppressed the memory quickly but the damage had been done. His mood plummeted drastically. He hated that he could be doing so well, he could think of nothing but his day to day survival for weeks and then a quick flash of the past would strike into his mind and he would be totally derailed. He looked at the tops of the bottles of beer poking out of the top of the plastic bag. He groped in his pocket for his bottle opener and cursed when he realised that he didn’t have one with him. He could see it still lying on the battered coffee table in front of the sofa. He swore to himself before turning and starting the engine. Desperate times call for desperate measures. There were other places in town where he could get a drink. 

It was still relatively early when he pulled up outside the Roadhouse, the bar owned by Jo’s mother Ellen. The sun was just starting to decline and the world was bathed in the slightly unearthly light of the early evening. There were no other cars parked outside and the music leaking from indoors was still muted. The place hadn’t really woken up from its day time snoozing yet. On the one hand this meant that Dean would probably have Ellen’s undivided attention and it would be nice to catch up with her. On the other hand, it meant that he would have Ellen’s undivided attention and he would have to answer questions about why his early evening drinking habit was resurfacing. It wasn’t of course the case that it was resurfacing, it had never gone away, but Dean had started to hide his drinking guiltily after Ellen’s concerned probing had become a little too much to take. 

As soon as Dean pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside he realised the he needn’t have worried. There was someone in there that already had Ellen’s undivided attention. Bobby. He was sitting on one of the stools at the bar. In fact, it was the first stool that you came to when you opened the door. It looked a little like he’d just walked in and slumped onto the first thing he came to. He was now sitting there, shoulders hunched, head down, batting a half empty bottle of beer backwards and forwards across the rough surface of the bar top between his hands. Ellen was standing in front of him. A tough looking woman, Ellen Harvelle had the kind of face that could be both devastatingly kind and devastatingly angry. Her smooth skin and neat brown hair made her look much younger than her eyes and demeanour declared her to be. Currently her mouth was set in a determined line as she lent both her hands on the bar right in front of Bobby, talking at him with a sense of insistent intensity. Neither of them noticed him come in. 

He glanced around. The bar wasn’t empty. There was a group of men in paint stained work clothes sitting at a table in the shadows at the back of the room talking loudly and laughing. A sour looking older man who was a permanent fixture of the place, though to Dean’s knowledge no one knew who he was or even his name, sat at his normal seat on a stool at the far end of the bar staring morosely into the middle distance. Jo was hovering, scrubbing tables and trying to look like she wasn’t listening to the conversation going on at the front of the bar but not being very successful. As he came in her eyes darted to him. It was her movement across the room towards him that drew the attention of Ellen and, as a result, Bobby.

Ellen smiled quickly at him. Waving him across to sit down and turning to get him a drink. No need to order, he’d been there enough. Bobby’s eyes were slightly bloodshot and there was a slight puffiness to his eyes that suggested that he might have been crying. Dean was shocked by that thought, it felt similar to the feeling children have when they first see their parents cry, and pushed it away in favour of the idea that since Bobby had departed the workshop that morning he had been here drinking. That wasn’t entirely out of character for Bobby, especially not since he had had the benefit of Dean’s help. Bobby grunted a greeting and took another swig of his beer. 

“D’you get the car done?” he asked gruffly.

“Yeah,” Dean replied. “Had another one brought in that’s giving me some trouble. Gonna have to work on it some more tomorrow.”

Bobby grunted again and drank again. 

Ellen dumped a beer down in front of Dean.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said brightly but accusingly. “Thought you’d forgotten about us.”

Dean forced himself to smile, “Couldn’t forget you Ellen. Besides, Jo bugs me every second she’s got free. Turning up at the workshop all the time, following me around.”

“Hey,” Jo said, with a tinge of real annoyance. “I don’t follow you around. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Dean raised his hands defensively, keeping his fake smile firmly in place. Ellen glared at her daughter. While she had always treated Dean with a great deal of warmth and had seemed to grow genuinely fond of him over the time he had been frequenting her bar Dean was well aware that he was not the kind of man that she would want for Jo. Dean had a clear sense that Ellen wanted something better for her daughter than what she’d had and Dean was not part of a better life. He wasn’t about to disagree with that.

“I don’t follow him around!” Jo said.

“You got too much work to do to be following anyone around,” Ellen grumbled. 

“I just go see Bobby sometimes. What? I’m not allowed to do that anymore?” she crossed her arms across her chest lips twitching into a slightly smug smile. She well knew that her mother would never say that she couldn’t visit Bobby and so it was a safe argument.

Ellen pursed her lips and turned consciously away from Jo. What she saw when looking at Dean and Bobby didn’t please her much either and she huffed, crossing her arms.

“You two,” she said. “Pair of miserable old drunks the both of you.”

“Hey! Less of the old,” Dean replied half-heartedly. Bobby didn’t bother to reply at all. 

Ellen shook her head and strode away to serve a customer, visibly giving up on the both of them. 

Dean was three beers in and starting to question the wisdom of stopping at the Roadhouse, debating whether he had a hope of being in a fit state to drive home at any point that night or whether he was feeling reckless and stupid enough to just risk it regardless, when Bobby addressed him. 

“I know why I’ve got good reason to be miserable. But what’s your excuse?” he asked with a noticeable slur on his voice.

Dean didn’t answer for a moment, debating with himself how sincere an answer he should give. He wasn’t in the mood for sincerity, so he simply said, “It’s none of your business.”

Bobby shook his head and said something so uncomplimentary about Dean that it made Dean chuckle. 

Dean turned his head slightly and surveyed Bobby. “What’s your good reason?” he asked curiously. Vague memories of the mysterious message that Jo had delivered to the work shop were rising in his mind. 

“None of your damn business,” Bobby replied promptly. 

“Got anything to do with that guy Jo was talking about? What was it? Miller? Miles?”

“Milton,” said Bobby quietly. Then a moment later he was gone. The door remained swinging slightly in the wake of his forceful departure. 

“Don’t go asking him about it.” Ellen had obviously heard the short exchange and had now approached. 

“What?”

“I heard you. Don’t ask him about the Milton’s. That’s a whole nest of snakes that’s been prodded enough as it is.”

“I wasn’t…”

“I know you weren’t meaning to pry. But that man’s had enough troubles in his life and he don’t need you raking over old ground. Got it?”

Dean nodded meekly, “Got it.” 

Ellen watched him suspiciously for a few moments longer, “What’s eating at you anyway?” she asked. 

“Nothing,” Dean downed his drink and stood, “See you Ellen.”

He could feel the disbelief in her stare boring into his back as he walked out. It still wasn’t that late but the night air was crisp and cooler than it had been for the past few weeks. Dean paused just outside the door and took a deep steadying breath, digging his hands deep into the pockets of his well-worn brown jacket. He felt steady enough and, aware of the emptiness of his wallet, didn’t really consider trying to find the town’s one and only cab driver a viable option. Had he had money it would have been rather a pointless task anyway, the man was often in bed by ten. With roads as quiet as those around Fairview being the only obstacle between him and home and the drive being a relatively short one, Dean decided to risk it.

Truth be told, Dean had decided to risk it far more often than he should have done. Even once was, of course, once too many but Dean’s recklessness had been steadily growing in recent years. There had been a time when he had sworn that he would never do something so stupid. His father had never seen any reason why having had a drink should stop him driving and Dean could remember more than one phone call from a drunken John Winchester after he’d run the car off the road. Sometimes the call came from the road side, sometimes it came from hospital. Dean hadn’t understood it as a child. He wasn’t sure he understood it now either but he had realised long ago that the actions that are most dangerous are the ones you understand the least. 

He pushed the dark memories from his mind and climbed into his car. He’d never had an accident before? Why would he have one now?

Realistically he should have known that from the moment that thought crossed his mind that this would be the one and only time something would happen. He made it to the home stretch before anything did happen. He was quite pleased with himself. He’d negotiated Main Street and the few Fairview residents still out and about with no trouble. He’d survived the few tricky twists and turns in the road that might have caused difficulty. He was driving along the wide and relatively straight road leading to the house; he’d turned the radio on and was singing along under his breath. He wasn’t really concentrating, that was true, and he really wasn’t expecting anyone else to be there. That was the main problem. The car headlights appeared from around a slight bend in the road. There wasn’t any danger of a collision but Dean reacted instinctively anyway, swerving sharply to the left with a curse. The left hand wheels of the car left the road and skidded slightly on the new, softer surface. Dean pulled the steering wheel back to the right and so narrowly avoided colliding with the larger trees that stood a short way from the road. Smaller, brittle branches cracked harshly but harmlessly against the windscreen of the car and scraped along the bonnet of the car making Dean wince at the potential damage to his paintwork as the car came to an abrupt stop half off the road.

Dean spun round to see if the other car had stopped. It had. Despite the darkness Dean realised that it was the city car that had driven past his house the day before. Perhaps it was someone from the farms. The driver’s side of the door opened, hesitantly and it looked like someone was getting out. Dean was not eager for a confrontation with anyone. He wasn’t sure how obvious it was that he’d been drinking and had no idea who this person was and how scrupulous they might be about the law. So, before the person could fully get out of their car or get too close, Dean restarted the engine and slowly returned all four of the cars wheels to the road. He glanced back. The occupant of the other car was also obviously uninterested in conversation. The driver’s door slammed shut and the car started to move off. Dean turned back and too moved on. More slowly and more carefully this time. 

His heart was thumping in his chest. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. How could he have been so damn stupid? He knew damn well that you never knew just how drunk you were. Even Dean who had had his first drink when he was fourteen still found it hard to judge exactly how much alcohol was affecting him. Especially in the early stages. He knew when he was drunk and he knew what his limit was but he knew you didn’t have to be drunk for your mind and your reactions to be off. Stupid. So damn stupid. He’d nearly gotten himself killed. Not that that would be a huge tragedy but he could have gotten someone else killed as well. 

_You’re just like Dad. You don’t care about anyone but yourself._

Dean couldn’t keep the memory away and, though he hated himself more for it, when he got home the first thing he did was pour himself a glass of whiskey. He swallowed it down in one, burning his throat horribly. It was cheap stuff and, even if you were used to it, it was like swallowing battery acid. He winced and shook his shoulders. A gust of wind dashed into the house, throwing open the door which he hadn’t quite closed behind him so that it cracked against the wall with a loud bang. Dean ignored it and poured himself another glass. There was no way he was finishing this night sober. 

-

Once Castiel had left Fairview and the danger of running into people he knew his day had gotten much better. The mall was nearly deserted and he was served in the phone shop by a disinterested employee who only made a half-hearted attempt to get Castiel to purchase a phone of greater value than the one that he wanted. Castiel didn’t like people as a general rule and felt that whoever had invented online shopping deserved far more recognition than they were getting, but after the encounter with Maggie Stark this experience was downright pleasant. 

After that he had stocked up on food, strictly things that didn’t require refrigeration or much cooking, and other general supplies. A few phone calls had assured him that it would be an easy matter to reopen the water, electricity and gas supplies at the property. The accounts had been cancelled rather than stopped due to lack of payment so all the companies were very pleased to receive his custom again. He just hoped that all the plumbing and wiring was still in reasonably good order. If they were, he was promised that by that afternoon he could be enjoying electricity and water in the comfort of his own home. Not naturally a trusting person, he bought a supply of candles and two gallon jugs of water anyway. 

On his return to the house he embarked on a mission to try and turn the place back into something halfway liveable. He started with a thorough exploration of the place. It wasn’t an overly large house. Downstairs the hallway was flanked on one side by a large square sitting room and on the other an equally sized dining room. It was really a dining room in theory only. It had been glorified storage all through Castiel’s childhood and had only been cleared annually for special occasions like Christmas and thanksgiving. At the back of the house there was the kitchen. It ran almost the entire length of the house and was cut short only by a utility room and a larder. Upstairs, there were three good sized double bedrooms and one smaller single bedroom. Unlike many more modern homes the entire house was only served by one large bathroom until Castiel’s father had had a shower room built into the master bedroom at the request of his wife. 

Upstairs was in relatively good shape Castiel decided. The only piece of furniture left was a chest of drawers in the master bedroom, which was a shame, but the floorboards all seemed sound and, aside from the decaying windows, everything was just dusty and dirty. He threw all the windows open and as the breeze danced playfully through the rooms he fancied that the house was breathing again. 

Downstairs, while there wasn’t any more furniture than there was upstairs there was more debris. The dining room was home to a pile of old cardboard boxes as well as some broken china that Castiel recognised from his childhood. The cardboard had been nibbled by rats and mice and there was ample evidence of their residence in the room. Castiel spent a good half an hour on his hands and knees crawling around the edge of the room trying to block up all the gaps that looked even faintly like they might admit a rat or a mouse. Castiel wasn’t squeamish and he firmly believed that all animals had a right to life he just didn’t particularly fancy the idea of hearing their little feet scrabbling on the floorboards while he tried to sleep. He cleared out the cardboard and all the rubbish lying in the hallway and though the bulging black bin bags that resulted made the front of the house look more untidy, it certainly improved the inside. 

On further inspection, the sofa that was standing in the middle of the sitting room was actually in an acceptable state. Once spread with the thick blanket that Castiel kept in the car in case of break downs it looked relatively inviting. It became far less inviting when he realised it would be where he was sleeping for the foreseeable future. He lay down on it experimentally. The springs dug into his back and after a vague thought about what might have slept there before it made his skin feel decidedly itchy.

He sat up slowly and ran a hand shakily across his face as he tried to control the sudden wave of anger and resentment that had coursed through him. Castiel was famous for his calm, contained attitude and he fought hard to maintain his focus. He had never seen the point in over the top displays of emotion for himself and had observed them with certain wariness in others. Cool, calm, collected Castiel. It had been a running joke among family and the few friends he had for years that the day you succeeded in ruffling Castiel’s feathers you were probably bringing about the apocalypse. If his emotional state in recent days was anything to go by then the world’s days were seriously numbered. Castiel could feel the irritation of his eyes increasing as he rubbed his dusty dirt hands over them and forced himself to stop.

The tips of his fingers were black and that realisation combined with the itchy feeling that still persisted drove him into the kitchen where he tried the tap again, feeling more hopeful this time. He was rewarded for his optimism when the tap spluttered, the pipes rumbled and after a few tense moments a steady stream of water appeared. Initially it still had a slightly dubious colour and texture, so Castiel turned the tap to full and let it run. Once he was satisfied that the supply was now clear, he went back upstairs to enjoy his second hot shower of the day. 

It was about ten o’clock when Castiel made the foolish decision to try and reattach the screen door to its other hinge. A slight wind had picked up and the repetitive tapping of it against the house had frustrated him to the point where, armed with a hammer and some nails found in the little shed on the edge of the clearing in which the house stood, he approached the porch like a soldier ready to do battle. There was a bright moon and, even though there was only one working light bulb in the entire house, the soft glow of light from the house convinced him that he would have enough light to work by. 

Despite having grown up on a farm Castiel had never really been good at doing practical things. He had always been relegated to holding tools while his more able brothers took charge of the more ambitious construction projects. His contribution to the building of the shed had been to bring drinks and give his opinion on whether or not the walls were straight. So he should have known what the results of his endeavours would be. He realised belatedly that the tool that he probably needed to reattach the hinge to the rotting wood of the frame was a screwdriver. He also belatedly realised that the frame of the door would probably need replacing before any fix would become permanent. Still, he thought that he could attach it enough that it wouldn’t swing for one night. 

The nails weren’t suitable for hammering and kept slipping. As Castiel got more frustrated his swings became more and more wild and, eventually, the inevitable happened. One swing caught his thumb instead of the head of the screw and, if that wasn’t bad enough, the impact pressed his thumb hard against the brittle wood of the frame and came away peppered with splinters and dripping blood. 

Castiel grimaced in pain as he examined his thumb. He flexed it, satisfied himself that it wasn’t broken and then pulled a face all over again. Having run through his mental inventory he realised that he didn’t have anything resembling a first aid kit with him and he also realised that there was no way that he could just leave it the way it was. He returned to the front room where the one light bulb shone weakly. His small suitcase of belongings lay open in front of the window and he fished out a clean sock which was about the only thing that he had available to staunch the steady trickle of blood leaking from his finger. 

He remembered that there was a gas station on the other side of Fairview. It was the only place he was sure would still be open. Finger carefully wrapped, he climbed into the car. It was dark and the roads weren’t lit. With headlights he could just about see the road in front of him. Castiel wasn’t used to this sort of driving and it made him nervous. With his bulky thumb his left hand felt clumsy and out of control. He wasn’t really paying full attention to the road and took one of the corners a little faster than he attended. As a result, he didn’t have the time to dip the beam of his headlights when he rounded it and saw the other car approaching. It was bad driving etiquette on his part but it shouldn’t have been disastrous. Castiel watched in horror as the oncoming car swerved sharply and careered off the road into the shrubbery that lined it. 

The speed with which it happened meant that Castiel didn’t manage to stop the car until he had travelled almost fifty meters past where the oncoming car had left the road. He sat, frozen, horrified. Not necessarily horrified by what had happened, the car hadn’t been going very fast nor had it hit anything particularly hard so he wasn’t worried that its driver would be hurt, but horrified by the fact that now he would have to go out there, talk to the person (who he might know) and negotiate all of the awkward social niceties associated with the event. He balked at the very thought. His instinct was just to keep going and pretend it hadn’t happened. But he’d been too well trained to do that. With the greatest reluctance his hand went to the door handle. He glanced over his shoulder and couldn’t see any movement coming from the other car. Maybe the driver had been hurt. The car looked old, some vintage make that Castiel didn’t recognise. Maybe in a car that old even the slight impact could be dangerous. He didn’t know. Slowly, he opened the car door and swung his legs out, settling them on the road as his eyes remained fixed on the other car. Just as he was about to get out fully, the other car returned to life and its driver steered it carefully back onto the road service. Satisfied that the car’s occupant must be fine and taking the hint that they weren’t particularly interested in conversation either, Castiel swung his legs back into the car and closed the door. 

Moments later both cars had moved off in their respective directions. 

Castiel was unreasonably shaken by the encounter. His hands shook slightly and he gripped the steering wheel far harder than strictly necessary. His heart was beating faster than it should have been. His stomach was tied in knots. He tried to breathe deeply and use all the techniques that he’d developed over the years to keep himself calm and level but it didn’t really work. His equilibrium was totally disrupted and, unlike he had stupidly promised himself, coming back to his childhood home wasn’t proving to be a magical fix.

Except he hadn’t really been home yet. 

Castiel rushed through his trip to buy medical supplies, clumsily bandaging his fingers under the florescent lights of the gas station forecourt whilst disregarding the confused and concerned looks of the teenager working the late night shift. When he got home, he scrabbled around in the trunk of his car for the emergency torch that he always kept there. He was intensely grateful when he flicked it on and it shone strongly.

Ignoring how late it was, ignoring the fact that he had already made several stupid decisions to get himself in trouble that day, Castiel set off on the path that he had travelled a thousand times in his youth and had followed again in his mind hundreds of times in the years of his absence. He walked through the ring of trees surrounding the house, tangling his feet on roots that were hidden under layers of decaying leaves and pushing at the shrubs that had sprung up here and there. Thicker at the front, here, at the back of the house, the tree line was narrower and Castiel was soon through. In front of him there now stretched a huge field that had once upon a time been full of fertile crops. Now it was a lake of blackness that his torch barely penetrated. Castiel turned left and walked along its length. Here and there the roots of trees were encroaching on the narrow track that had once neatly separated agriculture and nature. Castiel was oddly thankful for it because each root told him that he hadn’t strayed out into the field where he might lose himself wondering. Once he reached the corner of the field he turned, and continued to track along its edge moving upwards now. 

Castiel moved slowly, shining the torch into the tall bushes that replaced the tree line at this side of the field. Thorny bushes twisted in and out with berry bushes that still hung heavy with over ripe summer fruits that once upon a time had been greedily picked by soft boyish hands and shoved into mouths that were stained black with their juices. About a third of the way up the length of the field Castiel found what he was looking for: a point where, through some strange accident of nature, two bushes had grown together to form a natural archway that allowed passage into the neighbouring field. There was a gate at the top of the field, and both fields could be accessed via a dirt road that ran between the rows of fields belonging to the farm but as a boy Castiel had always come this way. 

The neighbouring field was quickly traversed as the track that ran through the centre of it was still relatively well trodden and the lone tree at its centre proved to be a good landmark. Having crossed the field he proceeded to its extreme corner and clambered over a dilapidated fence to drop into an area of much denser, greener vegetation. There weren’t just trees here. There were bushes and shrubs, many of them fragrant with flowers. The canopy was thick and dark and in the day time it gave the area an almost tropical, exotic feel while at night it created darkness so extreme that it seemed to Castiel that it was eating into the thin light of the torch. 

Castiel walked through, being guided by something internal and illogical. He had little to no idea where he was going and he wasn’t following any landmarks but his steps remained confident and true. Before long, he felt the ground begin to descend slightly, there was a slight softening of earth under foot and then Castiel came to an abrupt stop, dropped carefully to his knees, extended a hand tentatively into the darkness in front of him and brushed his fingers lightly through the air until they came to rest gently on the surface of the water of the river that snaked its way calmly through the darkness in front of him.

The water tugged at his fingers, swirling round them playfully as it flowed by. Twenty four years old, wearing a dirty trench coat and a crumpled sweaty suit, Castiel lay down on his stomach and dipped his hand fully into the water and as he did so he felt an intense sense of peace descending upon him. This was his place, this had always been his place and here, on soft bed of slightly damp earth and fallen leaves, with the water at his fingertips, Castiel slept. 

-

Dean woke again to the unpleasant sensation of the sun’s fingers creeping over his face. He rolled over and pressed his face into the rough sofa cushions with a barely suppressed groan. As always, memories from the previous day filtered back gradually- hazy at first but gaining slowly in clarity. He remembered having an odd conversation with Bobby and Ellen at the roadhouse, he remembered the ill-fated decision to drive home and he remembered his little adventure into the bushes by the road side. He groaned again and scrabbled for his phone to check the time. It was early. Barely even six. 

Dean sat up yawning. He felt grubby and, glancing round the place, it wasn’t just him that could do with a bit of a clean-up. Knowing that he wasn’t likely to get back to sleep any time soon he clambered to his feet and embarked on some half-hearted tidying, grabbing the empty cans and the discarded food packets, hastily shoving them into a plastic carrier bag. The t-shirts, socks, shirts and other such items were rolled into one big bundle and unceremoniously shoved into the back of the wardrobe in the barely used bedroom. Finally, Dean threw open the windows to allow the cool breeze of the early morning to wash away some of the stale smell and heavy atmosphere that had taken over the room. 

The whole time he was working he was trying his best not to remember the consequence of his stupid decisions of the previous day. Nothing very bad had happened. No one had been hurt, neither car had been damaged, but Dean wasn’t stupid enough to thank his lucky stars and move on like nothing had happened. He’d made a stupid self-indulgent decision and someone could have paid with their life. Dean had always thought of himself as a person who protected people, helped people. That was what he’d always told himself anyway. But for years he’d become more and more aware that actually, he was more capable of destroying things than protecting them. He’d blundered through one bad move into the next becoming more and more terrified at the capacity that his choices had to destroy others. Until the point had come where he hadn’t even thought of it as a problem anymore and had just told himself that he was right, that he was just making the hard decisions and the touch choices that no one else could…that he had no choice…and if anyone else had a problem with it then they were clearly blind to reality…

_When are you going to realise that you’re the problem here._

He’d been readjusting his thinking for a long time now and he had started to be able to kid himself that the only person he was hurting was himself. Last night had shown him that that might not strictly be true. 

By the time he made it to work Dean was already exhausted. He came armed with the biggest size coffee that the diner offered and was surprised to see that Bobby clearly hadn’t arrived yet as the workshop was still locked. With an exasperated grunt he fished in his back pocket for his set of keys. 

Bobby didn’t arrive for another hour. When he did he had a face like thunder and red eyes that spoke of a sleepless alcohol fuelled night. He barely acknowledged Dean’s presence, stomping past into the office and slamming the door. Dean had seen Bobby in black moods before but this had to be the darkest he’d seen. He thought back to Ellen’s cryptic warnings. Dean had seen a lot in his time and encountered some seriously crappy situations so he could imagine a hundred ways that someone could have hurt Bobby enough to create this reaction. That didn’t stop him being curious. 

For the rest of the morning, Dean worked solidly, but his eyes travelled regularly to the door of the office. It was lunch time before the curiosity got the better of him. He gave the door a cursory knock before pushing it open.

“Hey Bobby, heading out for lunch, want me to get you anything?” he asked.

Bobby visibly jumped and stared at Dean like he was an alien who had stumbled into the office. He looked like he’d just been sitting there, staring into space all morning, he hadn’t even taken out a pen. 

“Huh?”

“Lunch. Food,” Dean repeated. 

“What? No. I don’t want anything.”

Bobby sounded distracted, his voice thick and heavy. Dean narrowed his eyes at him, “You ok Bobby?” 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Bobby snapped, scowl deepening. 

“Because you seem kind of out of it.”

Bobby made a dismissive noise and shook his head.

“Seriously. You haven’t come out of this room all morning. You haven’t yelled at me…” he added, a lame attempt at injecting humour. “Something’s getting to you.”

“Yeah. But it ain’t none of your damned business,” Bobby replied angrily. 

Dean held his hands up defensively, “Relax. I’m just asking.” He would have added something about how he didn’t like to see Bobby this way, but that came dangerously close to admitting that he was asking these questions because he cared for Bobby and not just because he was curious. Dean hadn’t come here to find people to care about, he’d come here to get away from caring about people. 

Bobby deflated slightly, sighing harshly, “I don’t mean to bark at you,” he said, slightly more gently. “It’s all ancient history. There’s no point in going over it all again.”

“Really? You seem to be going over it.” Dean was surprised that he survived the glare that Bobby directed at him in response. He gave a small shrug. “Just saying that if you want to talk about it…”

“Yeah, yeah,” was the clearly embarrassed reply, “Go get your lunch.”

“I’m not joking,” said Dean, retreating. He wasn’t going to lie; he was glad that Bobby was not the type to take him up on the offer. Dean wasn’t big on talking about feelings. His own feelings made him uncomfortable enough without adding other peoples to the mix as well but he always felt like he should offer. That’s what other people wanted. To have their feelings acknowledged. Right?

It was as Dean was walking back from the store and coming past Fairview’s one small café that he heard the name Milton again. Maggie Stark, the impossibly perfect wife of Don Stark the town’s most successful business man, was sitting at one of the small tables outside talking animatedly with Rosa the café’s owner. 

“Castiel Milton!” She was saying as Dean approached, “Would you believe it? Just strode into the diner like he’d never left. Thought I’d seen a ghost.”

“Are you sure it was him?” Rosa asked doubtfully. 

Maggie nodded vigorously, “Oh yes. He said he was seeing about the house. He was the youngest brother, I couldn’t remember his name at first but it was definitely him.”

“He didn’t have anything to do with…?”

“No no. At least, I don’t think he did.” She leant forward conspiratorially. “I remember Constance, up at the church, telling me that…”

Dean drew level with them at this point. Maggie trailed off as she caught sight of him. Dean flashed them both his most charming smile. “Ladies,” he said. 

“Dean!” Maggie matched his smile and shifted in her seat, thrusting her body forward seductively, “You promised you’d drop by and look at my trees and you haven’t!” she chided him wickedly. Maggie flirted shamelessly with every unattached gentleman available to her. She and Don were always fighting over something and she used these flirtations as a weapon to prove to him how easily he could lose her. There was nothing to it. She would never act on it and she was always careful to stop before anyone could make the mistake of thinking she would. So Dean had no qualms about playing along.

“Sorry Maggie. Bobby’s been working me hard,” he glanced around quickly and then took the plunge. “Did I just hear you talking about Castiel…Milton?”

Maggie looked surprised, “Yes! Do you know him?”

“No! No. Just…came up, in passing.”

He could see the cogs working in Maggie’s mind. She was widely recognised as the central depository of information concerning the residents of Fairview and their comings and goings. She was storing Dean’s enquiry, linking it up with everything else she knew and busily reaching conclusions. 

“Well if you work for Bobby…” Rosa began, but trailed off when Maggie shot her a sharp look.

“What’s it got to do with Bobby?” Dean asked.

“Oh nothing,” Maggie replied. She realised instantly however that this was utterly unconvincing. “Everything really,” she amended, “But we don’t really talk about it.” She shot an accusing look at Rosa here, who reddened and muttered something about needing to attend to her customers before scurrying off. 

“Why not?” Dean asked, struggling to believe that there was something that Maggie considered off limits for gossiping. 

“Too many old wounds,” she said vaguely, sitting back in her chair. “Best not to go over old ground. And no one likes to air their grievances in public.”

Dean realised that she wasn’t going to talk any more about it and didn’t push. He’d seen Maggie in a temper enough times to put her high on his “do not upset” list. By her last comment he was made to understand that as an outsider, he wasn’t going to be privy to information about the town’s previous doings. They were sometimes like that in Fairview. Reluctant to share the short comings of the town’s residents with Dean because he was an outsider, not one of them and Fairview was the kind of place that protected their own. On the surface, it seemed like they were protecting Bobby, but Dean had the strange feeling that it was a lot more complicated than that. 

After promising that he would be back to look at her trees when he had time, Dean left her to it. As he walked away he glanced back and saw Rosa emerging from the café and talk urgently with Maggie. Something was going on here and Dean couldn’t help but be determined to figure out what it was. Particularly because Bobby was his friend and this Castiel Milton seemed like a serious threat to his friends happiness. 

-

When he woke up, Castiel had no idea where he was. The ground was hard and cold under him. He felt uncomfortably damp and his arm was dangling into a puddle. He sat bolt upright heart thumping as he realised where he was. His fingers were icy cold and the cold travelled up his arm, straight into his core and set him shivering. He scrambled to his feet. His limbs were stiff and he stumbled awkwardly, having to grab onto a nearby tree to keep himself upright as he looked around. 

He was standing on the edge of a river. It wasn’t particularly wide or particularly narrow. It wasn’t possible to jump across it, no matter how much of a run up you took his youth had taught him that, but you never landed too far from the shore. Where he was standing the bank of the river was quite steep but it was irregular and barely ten meters upstream the shore dipped to form a sort of miniature beach. The whole area was overgrown with trees fighting for space to such an extent that many of them had reached out over the river itself and several were trailing branches in the water. 

This had been Castiel’s sanctuary throughout his childhood. Whenever he had wanted to get away from his family, when he had wanted to hide, when it all gotten too much he had come here. A thousand imaginary worlds had been created in this one place. He had examined every inch of the place, been fascinated by every aspect of the natural world from the tiny silvery fish that darted around in the shallows to the bugs that lived in the decaying branches of fallen trees. The river had been his home, his place and it had been the place that he had fled to. He didn’t know whether he found that embarrassing or if he was glad that he had still been able to find comfort there.

He stretched out his aching muscles and sniffed distastefully at his clothes. He felt stupidly like laughing. Less than five days ago Castiel had woken up in his neat, functional apartment; dressed neatly in one of his many immaculate suits; gulped down a mug of expensive coffee and headed to work at his boring office based job in the state of the art glass tower owned by his brother. Now, he was waking up filthy by the side of a river with no real home, no job and no idea what he was doing. He had to laugh or he was going to cry.

Except Castiel wasn’t really the type to laugh.

The walk to the river the previous night had been frantic. The walk back was just uncomfortable. Castiel felt stupid and out of place blundering along in a suit. He was seeing everything with an adult’s eyes, everything was smaller, he was bigger…it was an uncomfortable perspective. He felt very clearly that he wasn’t a carefree child any more, he was a grown man, he had responsibilities, he couldn’t just run from his life. It was insane? What on earth had made him think that he could leave without a word? People would be worried! The police might be called and their time and resources wasted just because he didn’t want to face up to his problems. No, he couldn’t take that chance. He hurried on.

When he got back to the house Castiel revived his old phone. Within moments of plugging the charger in it started buzzing frantically as it caught up with phone calls and texts messages. Castiel ignored them. He held the phone in his hand like it might explode at any second and stared out of the window as he fought internally with himself. He knew he should call someone to at least let them know he was alive. But he didn’t know who he should call. The list of family members that he was willing to ever speak to again was a relatively short one. He scrolled nervously through his contacts, skipping between the likely candidates twitchily. He wasn’t sure whether he hit the call button intentionally or whether it was just some kind of involuntarily spasm. 

He listened to the dial tone. He didn’t bother to hope that no one would answer. He didn’t have that kind of luck. The phone was picked up after six rings, probably mere seconds before the automatic switch to answer phone.

“Hello!” 

Castiel was slightly wrong footed by the cheerful tone. He hadn’t heard it in so long. He swallowed hard. 

“Hello Gabriel,” he said awkwardly. “It’s me. Castiel.”

There was a short pause. “Castiel,” the tone was now cautious, an acknowledgement of his identity, no more, no less. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“I need to ask you a favour,” Castiel said bluntly. 

Gabriel scoffed, “A favour?”

“I need you to call Zac.”

“Call Zac?”

“Yes Gabriel. Call Zac. I need you to tell him I’m fine but I’m not coming back.”

He could almost hear Gabriel digesting the request. “We haven’t spoken in four year,” he said eventually. 

“I know…”

“We haven’t spoken in four years and you’re asking me to call Zac, who I haven’t spoken to in, hell, six years to tell him that you’re ok?”

“Yes,” said Castiel, trying to ignore how irate his brother was starting to sound. 

“And you’re not going to offer me any sort of explanation?”

“No.” Castiel wasn’t stupid. He realised what point Gabriel was trying to make.

Gabriel sighed. “I knew the rest of them were monumental dicks but I always hoped you were different.”

“Gab…”

“No Castiel you let me talk. I have been trying to rebuild my life away from the fucked up mess that we call a family for years and now you just…”

Castiel hung up. 

He exhaled slowly trying to retain his composure. He didn’t know what he had expected. He’d always been close with Gabriel. Gabriel had always looked after him, in his own unique way, protected him. Stupidly, Castiel had thought that that wouldn’t have changed. Despite everything. He’d known that Gabriel had been upset by Castiel’s choice to work for Zac but he’d thought that Gabriel stayed away from them because of Zac. Not because of Castiel. He was starting to re-evaluate that assumption. 

He scrolled through the contacts on his phone again. Zac, Luc, Michael….Daphne…Gabriel was now out of the question. There would have been Balthazar but Balthazar had recently departed for a debauched cruise around the Caribbean. He had informed Castiel quite explicitly that he intended to be uncontactable for the foreseeable future. There was no one he could call.

Castiel dropped the phone and wandered to the window. He didn’t have anyone to call. So why had he been so convinced that anyone would care enough to look for him? Daphne, his brothers, they had all made it clear that they were more concerned with themselves and their own selfish desires than him. He’d been pretty clear when he left that he didn’t want to be followed. He didn’t have any reason to believe that anyone would go against his wishes. It wasn’t going to benefit them to do so. 

His phone rang. He went back and picked it up from where it lay on the floor. Gabriel’s name was showing on the screen. Either he was calling back to apologise or to shout some more. Castiel wasn’t willing to find out which it was. He turned the phone off and, after a few moments consideration, strode out of the front door with it still clutched firmly in his hand. He went round to the back of the house where there had always been several large water containers that collected rainwater. They were still there now, though their tops were clogged with leaves and algae. This time Castiel didn’t hesitate. He dropped the phone into the fullest container and watched it sink. Now he was free of temptation.

On the way back into the house Castiel caught sight of something else to add to his list of reasons why his day was shaping up to be terrible. The left hand back tire of his car was well and truly flat. He knew that he didn’t have a spare; he’d never replaced it after a memorable incident during a business trip two years previously. It was stupid and irresponsible but there was little to no call for spare tires in the inner city. 

With a resigned sigh Castiel went and found the bin bag full of post and junk mail that he had carefully bagged up and thrown away. He fished through the endless wads of furniture and clothing catalogues, the adverts from various TV and phone companies and the takeaway leaflets. He was looking for one particular set of leaflets that he remembered from when he’d gathered them up. He remembered it because there were several, clearly they had been distributed regularly and they were incredibly simple. He found one and pulled it out triumphantly. White sheet of paper with the words “Local Mechanic” printed across the top with a phone number beneath. One of the most recent and least faded examples also had a clip art car awkwardly tagged on to the bottom. 

When Castiel had been young there had been only one mechanic in Fairview. He knew very well that if it was the same person still then he didn’t really want to call that number. But he also wouldn’t last very long if he didn’t have a car and this was his best option. He would call the number and if the wrong person answered he would search for a mechanic from further afield. 

The phone rang. Again, it rang and rang and was only picked up at the very last second. The voice that answered sounded disgruntled and he was relatively sure that he heard the person mutter something along the lines of ‘do I have to do everything around here?’ before answering properly.

“Hey, this is Bobby Singer’s Auto and Salvage, Dean speaking can I help you?”

Castiel breathed a sigh of relief; it wasn’t the person he had feared. He sheepishly explained his problem.

The person on the other end of the phone, Dean, sighed. Castiel cringed at the judgement contained in that one sigh. “No problem,” the man said, “I can fix that. Where abouts do you live?”

“The Milton Farm. Just up the Desert Road.” When that didn’t get a response Castiel continued, “You have to leave town to the East on Main Street…”

“Yeah I know where it is,” came the slightly sharp reply. “Can I take a name?”

“Castiel Milton.”

There was a slight pause. “I can come by and replace it tonight after I get done here. Say about 6?”

“That’s fine.”

“Ok, I’ll see you then.”

Castiel took the phone away from his ear and looked at it curiously. He couldn’t help but realise that the man had found significance in his name. Not for the first time he wondered just how fresh the memories of the events of all those years ago were in the minds of Fairview’s residents. Well, come six o'clock he would be a lot closer to finding out.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Dean put the phone down thoughtfully. He was surprised that someone who obviously had history with Bobby would call his workshop for help. Or perhaps Castiel was well aware that Bobby was the only option for miles around. Castiel. Luckily for him, when Dean had returned from lunch Bobby hadn’t been there so Dean had had to answer the ancient mobile phone that doubled as an office phone and on call phone when it rang shrilly from inside the office. Dean didn’t know what he’d expected from the person whose name had put Bobby into a pathetic downward spiral but the careful, cultured voice on the end of the phone didn’t really match with any of the possibilities that immediately sprang to mind.

He looked at the grimy clock that ticked away on the wall of Bobby’s office. It was early in the afternoon still and it would be a while yet before he could satisfy his curiosity about the identity of Castiel Milton. With a sigh, he returned to trying to solve the mystery of why his latest patient’s instrument panel had the tendency to light up like a Christmas tree at random intervals, terrifying its poor elderly owner. 

Bobby didn’t return that day. He called to check that Dean had everything he needed and told him vaguely that he had been called away to attend to ‘business.’ Dean had assured him that he could lock up and hadn’t pushed the issue. Bobby wasn’t going to tell him what was going on, but Dean had other avenues to explore. 

He still wasn’t sure why he was so interested. It wasn’t anything to do with him really. But old habits die hard and he hadn’t spent a life time trailing in his father’s wake investigating one crazy lead after another without becoming indoctrinated with a need to know the truth. Not that knowing the truth had ever provided his father with any comfort…Dean shook his head and closed down that bitter train of thought as he reached for a smaller screwdriver. This was totally different. This wasn’t part of the crusade. This was just idle curiosity bred from having nothing to do in a sleepy small town. Nothing more.

When 5:30 ticked around and it was time to shut up the work shop and head out to the farms Dean threw a spare tire in the back of the rusty death trap of a truck that Bobby kept around for picking up scrap and towing cars that didn’t quite make it to the workshop. Dean hated it. It was falling apart and was increasingly being held together by duct tape alone. Dean thought it was a disgrace to be a mechanic and show up in something so tatty but there was also no way he was going to put anything greasy and covered in oil on the back seat of his baby so he drove the truck with extreme bad grace. 

When he saw the state of the driveway to the Milton Farm he was again glad that he hadn’t driven his own car. He also wasn’t surprised that a car had gained a flat tire driving down this way. There were branches and rocks in the road which was also filled with potholes, some of them hidden by years of decaying leaves. It was treacherous to say the least. And creepy. Especially as the trees had grown together so densely overhead that the sun had great difficulty filtering through. He half expected a ghost to jump out from behind a tree at any moment. He proceeded with extreme caution.

The house, when he came to it, wasn’t any better. It had a distinctly haunted house vibe with its peeling paint, dusty windows and yard filled with rusty machinery. Aside from the car parked outside there were no signs of life. When he approached, he could see that the front door was almost hanging off its hinges and, when he looked closely, he was relatively sure that the dark stains on the edge of the screen door were blood.

“Not creepy at all,” Dean muttered, before lifting a hand to knock on the door frame. “Hello!” he called into the empty hallway. “Anyone home?” His voice echoed away into the empty house as he hovered on the doorstep.

After a few moments he heard movement and Castiel Milton appeared in the hallway. He was a tall, slim young man, younger than Dean had expected – probably around his own age, with messy dark hair and intense blue eyes. He was wearing the trousers from a dark coloured suit with a rumpled white shirt that looked like he’d slept in it, repeatedly. Dean wasn’t an expert but even he could tell that the clothes must have been expensive and it looked odd to see them in such a state. Along with the dark circles under his slightly blood shot eyes, Castiel looked distinctly dishevelled. Dean imagined that that was exactly what he had looked like when he had arrived in Fairview himself. Castiel didn’t smile upon seeing Dean.

Dean tried not to be fazed by the stern expression and smiled as charmingly as he could despite the unwelcoming atmosphere. “Here to fix your car,” he said, gesturing at it over his shoulder. “My name’s Dean. We spoke on the phone.”

Castiel nodded. He looked a little embarrassed. “The tire’s flat,” he said, with an achingly innocent simplicity in his voice.

“Yeah, you said,” Dean replied. Castiel stared at him awkwardly for a few more moments until Dean was forced to laugh. “Ok. Not that into chit chat. How about I start fixing it?” 

“Yes,” Castiel said, bluntly, continuing to stare at Dean like he was an alien that had just fallen from the sky.

Dean had never been looked at quite so intently. It should be uncomfortable. And it was to a certain extent. But Castiel seemed so clueless that Dean didn’t feel at all judged and he was mainly uncomfortable because he just didn’t know where to put his own eyes. The moments ticked by and Dean laughed again 

“Alright, I’m gonna get on that,” he said. Dean shook his head as he turned and walked back down the rickety wooden steps. How this person could have done anything to traumatise Bobby was becoming a greater mystery every moment.

“Do you…need anything?” Dean glanced over his shoulder to see that Castiel had followed him and was hovering at the bottom of the steps. 

“No, I think I got everything,” said Dean, grabbing and holding up the bag of tools from the back of the truck to show that he had everything covered. 

“Right. I’ll just…leave you to it then.”

There was a distinct pause before Dean heard the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs. He looked up to see the door swinging shut and shook his head disbelievingly. He’d only met the man for under five minutes but he was completely and utterly sure that whatever ghosts Castiel Milton had awoken in Bobby, those ghosts didn’t exist because of something that Castiel had done. Or maybe there was more to him than met the eye, but Dean was a good judge of character and Castiel seemed about as malevolent as a puppy. 

Shelving the mystery of Mr Castiel Milton temporarily, Dean turned his attention to the car. It was a stupid car for country driving. Small, small engine, low to the ground, not suited for any kind of terrain other than tarmac. Definitely a city car. It was the kind of car that Dean really considered a waste of time, modern rubbish, they just didn’t make cars like they used to. Regardless, changing a tire was a relatively simple job if you had the right equipment. Some mechanics refused to do it, or seriously over charged for the service because they considered it a chore that was beneath them. Dean was just happy when he had a chance to work with his hands. 

Dean worked quickly and within fifteen minutes the tire was changed. It was a warm day so by the time he was finished he was feeling sticky, dirty and tired. He went back to the house and knocked on the door. He waited a few minutes but when he didn’t get a response, stepped tentatively into the hallway. 

The house was nearly empty. The rooms were dusty and devoid of furniture, but there were traces of a living hand. In the living room a suitcase lay open at the foot of a battered sofa showing a jumble of semi-formal clothes. Someone had also clearly been cleaning the kitchen at the back of house. The surfaces had been scrubbed and the floor was still slightly wet after having been mopped. Dean opened a cupboard at random in search of something to drink out of but the cupboards were mostly bare, there certainly wasn’t any crockery, so he turned the tap on and scooped water up with his hand. It was cool and clean despite the rustiness of the tap and the layers of grime that still remained in the sink. He drank thirstily.

“I’m sorry I don’t have any glasses.” 

Dean spun round, spraying water across himself and the newly clean surface. “Jesus Christ man. You scared the crap out of me.”

Castiel blinked, “I didn’t mean to.”

Raising his eyebrows, Dean turned the tap off and shook his hands dry. “I finished the tire. Just came in for a drink.”

“How much do I owe you?”

“Call it…fifty.” Dean looked around a little uneasily “You got that kind of money?” he asked bluntly.

Castiel looked confused. “Why wouldn’t I?” 

“Well, no offence, but this place is kind of basic.”

“Oh,” Castiel looked around as though he hadn’t noticed. “I just moved back. This place has been empty for years.”

“Yeah? Looks it. Are you gonna be able to fix it up? I mean, no offense but you couldn’t even change a tire.”

“I’ll manage,” said Castiel, looking slightly offended. 

“Sorry. You just don’t look the DIY type,” Dean gestured at Castiel’s suit trousers. 

Castiel looked down as well and plucked at the smart material. “I didn’t realise it would be like this,” he admitted. “The house I mean, not the trousers…” he trailed off and looked away, embarrassed. 

Dean laughed. They stood and looked at each other for a few moments. Dean searched for something to say. It had quickly become clear to him that Castiel wasn’t quite on the same wavelength as the rest of the world. His eyes were bright and intelligent but he looked slightly dazzled. Normally Dean found it easy to be charming, to talk the hind leg of a donkey, but he was finding this conversation a little trickier. 

“Why’d you come back?” he asked eventually. “Small town like this people normally want to move away from.”

Castiel seemed to consider the question for a moment, he tipped his head to one side and stared vaguely at one corner of the kitchen. Then he shook his head and spoke abruptly. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll go and get your money.” And he walked away.

“Well that went well,” Dean said to himself once he had recovered from the sudden exit. He was starting to think that it was a habit common to the inhabitants of this area.

He had meant to subtly gain information. Instead he was pretty sure that he had mortally offended Castiel. Which was a shame. There weren’t many people Dean’s age in town and those that were there were totally unwilling to hang out with a strange new guy who lived with the woman local legend believed was a witch. That and they were all a little too young for Dean, not in terms of years, in terms of experience. None of them had the same scars Dean did and that made it difficult to relate to them. They were all a little clean cut and naïve. Castiel might be naïve too but he looked like he might have a few scars too. Bobby, Ellen…they were good friends to him and they definitely had scars. But Dean was 25 years old. And they were both approaching 50. Sometimes, the generation gap was very painfully obvious. Castiel didn’t look like the kind of person Dean normally associated with, far too refined, but he was sure that his awkwardness could be very entertaining. And they were part of the same generation at least.

Castiel returned and practically threw the money at Dean. It was very obvious that Dean had outstayed his welcome already so he retreated hastily. Castiel followed him through the house and stood in the doorway watching as Dean got back in the truck. He looked back and couldn’t help thinking that Castiel struck a rather pathetic and lonely figure, standing on the porch of that decaying house looking like he was going to decay himself. Dean sighed, started the engine and drove away. He glanced back as the house disappeared from view and Castiel was still standing there. Watching. 

-

Castiel watched the mechanic called Dean drive away and could feel himself relax as relief washed over him. Dean had been disarmingly friendly, familiar and naturally curious. It was the first normal social interaction that Castiel had had since he’d left home almost a week previously. It had been exhausting. 

His questions had also made Castiel realise that he needed to develop a convincing story for why he was back in Fairview. Dean’s observation was true enough. There was very little reason for anyone to want to come back to a small town like this one. He didn’t have family to justify being there. He wasn’t likely to get a job. Definitely not a job that was in any way comparable to the one that he’d had in the city. Dean had also quickly identified that Castiel wasn’t really suitable for the kind of manual labour jobs which were the only ones still easy to come by in the area. Yes. He really needed to come up with a convincing story. Especially if he was going to start renovating the place. Vague references to business with the land weren’t going to cut it for very much longer. 

He went back into the house and looked at it all properly, the last remnants of the romantic image of his former child hood home well and truly destroyed by Dean’s comments. It really was a wreck. The walls and ceilings needed plastering. The windows needed replacing. The floors probably needed replacing too. Castiel had given himself concussion trying to paint a wall in his apartment. He really wasn’t qualified for this. He tried not to look too petulant as he dropped down onto the sofa, throwing one arm over his face so he couldn’t see the cracks in the ceiling that he had to fix.

Despite the fact that he was tired and his body hurt and all he really wanted to do was fall into a soft warm bed and sleep forever after a short few minutes lying there he became inexplicably restless. Huffing with irritation he clambered back to his feet. He drifted aimlessly from room to room for a while, trying not to see all the things that needed to be done. Every now and again something would catch his eye and in a burst of nervous activity he would scrub at a dirty window, or start sweeping dust away, or wage war on a concentration of cob webs but none of these projects held his attention for long. 

It was when he was stubbornly scrubbing at the floor in the bedroom that Michael and Luc had shared that his eye was caught by something that did finally hold his attention. One of the floorboards in the corner under the window was sticking up slightly. Castiel didn’t know why he didn’t immediately dismiss it as just another thing that needed to be fixed but he didn’t. He took a closer look.

On closer inspection it was clear that the floorboard was loose intentionally. There were gouges in the wood that suggested that it had been prised up regularly and not exactly carefully. Castiel ran his fingers along the edges, ignoring the prickles of wooden splinters against his soft skin. The edge was just raised enough for Castiel to get a grip on it and he slowly teased it upwards. It took minimal persuasion before it popped up and he was able to remove the board entirely.

Castiel peered into the gap that was left. He could see crisscrossing wooden planks; he could see dust and some kind of tightly packed insulation material. At first, he couldn’t see anything else. Then, he noticed a spot of something dark peeping out from under the insulation, just to side of the area actually revealed by removing the floorboard. Hoping fervently that there wasn’t anything alive in the hole just waiting to attack, Castiel reached into the gap and pulled out a thick black notebook.

The book was barely holding together. It was clearly a cheap notebook and the spine had been torn and stretched to its very limit as it had been filled with scraps of paper and pictures and what looked like newspaper clippings as well. As Castiel opened it a worn, crumpled photo fell out of the front. When Castiel picked it up he could almost feel the warmth of the hand that had obviously regularly handled the paper. It felt treasured. Which Castiel clearly understood as soon as he realised what the picture was. 

Five boys sitting on a fence with a field full of crops in the background. The oldest, sitting in the middle, was about 15. The smile on his face wasn’t particularly warm and he had eyes that were slightly sunken in his face. Zac had always looked like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. On his left hand side sat Michael. Nine years old, dark hair, bright eyes and a mischievous half smile. Michael had already been handsome. He was supporting a four year old Castiel who wasn’t much more than a chubby baby, chewing on the back of his hand as he looked uncertainly into the camera. On Zac’s right there was Gabriel, seven. Dirty blonde hair, dirty torn jeans, he looked chaotic but his smile was the brightest in the picture. He was using one arm to lean on Zac and had the other slung round the shoulders of Luc who, at five, was starting to grow out of his babyhood. Luc’s smile was slightly reserved and his eyes were shuttered, even at that early age. It was a snapshot of the brothers at a relatively happy stage of their life. True, their mother was dead but their father had still been holding things together reasonably well, the farm was still making money and the four younger brothers had been reasonably oblivious of the fact that there was a possibility that all that might change. It wasn’t long after this that things had gotten harder, so Castiel totally understood why this image might have become a focus point for any one of them. 

Castiel put the photo carefully to one side and turned his attention to the rest of the notebook, curious now to discover which of his brothers it had belonged to. As he read, however, his expression darkened. It was not a happy document. The words on the page were dark, angry, depressing and disturbing. Words were scrawled across pages, some of them circled and underlined and gone over a hundred times so that the paper had torn in places. Doodled shapes grew into grotesque and violent pictures that, combined with the newspaper clippings that appeared towards the end of the book, spoke of morbid interest. 

It only took one or two pages for Castiel to realise that the book belonged to Luc. He had always known that Luc was difficult. He’d been called ‘troubled’ by schools enough times. And they had all seen him in dark and wild moments but this was far beyond that. It made him feel sick to think of his brother pouring out all of his anger and hatred into this book while none of them had any idea and couldn’t help. Or maybe Michael had had an idea. And still couldn’t help. 

Castiel turned over the later pages which alternated with news clippings that had been highlighted and annotated. Words jumped out at him but he couldn’t bring himself to fully read the words. He didn’t want to relive those events through Luc’s eyes. He could barely tolerate reliving them through his own. But he couldn’t stop himself from seeing one word that popped out again and again and again. Zac. Zac. Zac. The world weary teenager in the picture morphed into the stern, balding man so twisted with bitterness that he approached everything with a simmering aggression.

Castiel slammed the book shut, dropped it onto the floor and left it there as he almost fled the house. By the time he was standing outside on the porch he was shaking. His self-control was waning again. He ran a shaking hand over his face, paced backwards and forwards with his hands on hips, tried to calm his breathing and centre himself. He couldn’t help noticing that even the fence from the picture was falling down. For some reason that observation made him laugh. So there he was. Standing in front of the house, laughing at a broken fence while his brother’s bitter words sprinted around his brain. 

He finally regained his composure as the laughter threatened to turn to tears. If there was one thing Castiel couldn’t stand, and would never allow himself to do, it was cry. He hadn’t cried since he was a child and his brothers had told him not to cry because their father couldn’t stand to see him cry because it reminded him of their mother. He’d taken the warning to heart until it had become a part of him. Taking deep breaths Castiel went back upstairs. He replaced the floorboard, he collected the book and picture and took them to his suitcase where he piled all of his clothes on top of it. He needed to preserve it but he didn’t want to see it. 

Then, Castiel started to entertain the insane idea that had been growing in his mind. He couldn’t fix the house up himself. That was obvious. He had money to pay someone to do it. He could have hired a full team of the best contractors to start tomorrow if he’d wanted. However, now that his income was reduced to what would come in from investments only (not an awful lot) he didn’t want to dive into his savings too much because he didn’t know how long he would have to live off them. Besides which, he needed to buy furniture, carpets, appliances etc. So to pay a professional to do it was not really an option either. Castiel was going to have to come up with another possibility. 

The insane idea growing in Castiel’s mind was: Dean. The man had been friendly. He had expressed an interest. He had hinted that he had the required knowledge. Castiel was not used to asking for help. As children he and his brothers had been self-sufficient. They had helped themselves and each other as a matter of course, you didn’t have to ask it was just done. The past few years working for his brother that had continued. Any other help that he needed he’d be in the fortunate position to be able to buy. He couldn’t remember ever having asked for a favour in his life. But now he needed a favour and Dean was the first person springing to mind. 

Castiel would pay him, of course he would, he just wouldn’t be able to pay him as much as he would have to pay a professional. He was relatively sure that Dean was new to the area. That meant that he was probably the only person in the area who didn’t have any kind of prejudice or preconception when it came to the Miltons and Castiel. That meant, that he was about the only person who might actually be willing to help. Castiel seriously hoped that he hadn’t misinterpreted Dean’s friendly interest as something that it wasn’t. He had no wish to make himself seem ridiculous and add another person to the list of people he needed to avoid. 

After fighting with himself for a while, as he paced in a slow circuit around the downstairs of the house, the thing that made the decision for him was when his eyes fell on the battered sofa and he realised that if he didn’t make serious strides in renovation and furniture buying he was going to have to spend the foreseeable future sleeping on that sofa. His back twinged painfully at the mere thought of it. No, there was no way he was going to be able to survive much longer without doing something.   
Thinking that there was no time like the present Castiel dialled the number that he had used to call Dean before. He had noticed that it was a mobile number and he hoped that that meant that it was something that Dean carried around his person and that it wasn’t too late to call him and pitch his idea. 

The phone rang for a long time and again, it was only picked up on what must have been the very last ring. 

“Hey, Bobby Singer’s Auto and Salvage how can I help you?” it was definitely Dean’s voice, just a little more tired this time. 

“Dean,” Castiel said, but then he wasn’t sure how to proceed so he paused and searched for the words.

“Yeah?” 

Castiel was still tongue tied. 

“Yeah?” Dean repeated, “Who’s this?”

Castiel jumped on the question, “It’s Castiel. We...spoke earlier. You, changed my tyre.”

“Yeah? There a problem with it?” 

“No,” Castiel said, “No. I was wondering if I could ask for your help with something.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to pause, and wait. There was a rustling sound as if Dean was shifting the hand set in his grip. “Ok,” he said evenly, “What do you need?”

-

Once he had negotiated the creepy and treacherous driveway and was safely back on the main road, Dean took a moment to be truly baffled by the situation that was emerging before him. Problem number one, age. Castiel had obviously been gone a long time. He looked to be in his early 20’s, if that, so he would have had to have left Fairview as a teenager. Bobby was a tough guy and at least twice Castiel’s age. Dean could not envisage a scenario in which a teenage Castiel had done anything that could seriously hurt or upset Bobby. No. There was a lot more to this scenario than Dean was getting. He had even more questions to answer now than he’d had before. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Things weren’t interesting if they were too simple. That was another thing years of trailing around after his Dad had taught him. If you put the energy into investigating you wanted it to be worth it.

“Dean Winchester you still haven’t taken out those bushes I asked you to.”

Martha was standing by the roadside having very clearly been waiting for him to get back. Dean was glad for a moment that he hadn’t bothered to drive the pickup back to town before coming back. If he’d done that he would have been facing an even deeper inquisition. 

Dean climbed out of the car slightly reluctantly. “Sorry Martha,” he said, “Haven’t got round to it yet.”

“You’ve been out awfully late the last couple of nights,” she observed. Following him as he walked towards his front door. 

“Yeah, had some stuff to do.”

The noise that Martha made in response to that clearly indicated that she didn’t believe him for a second. 

“Why don’t you come up to the house? I roasted a chicken and there’s far too much for just me.” Dean kept walking. “I made cherry pie too.”

Dean stopped short of his front door and turned to look at her with a wry smile. If Martha had learnt one thing about him it was that the best way to ensnare him was always with food. He never turned down a dinner invitation, no matter how reluctant he initially seemed to talk. At that moment, he seemed extremely reluctant to talk, so Martha had played her master card. Dean well know that he was about the only regular human contact that Martha had. She didn’t drive and very few of her friends did so she saw people every few weeks and aside from her ancient telephone was cut off. She loved having him around because he connected her to the outside world. Dean felt guilty that he had wanted to storm right past her.

“Well in that case…” he said.

Martha smile was radiant. “Oh good! You have to tell me everything about what’s going on in town. Did you see Lois? Has her daughter given birth yet? That baby’s never going to come. Have they finally finished redoing the flower beds over by the town hall? I told Clare that I’d be over and have a look when they have but I don’t want to go all the way into town if they haven’t.”

She chattered away as she lead him towards the house. Dean didn’t bother to try and interject replies that went beyond “yes” “no” and “maybe.” Martha wasn’t interested in him talking yet. She wanted to get out all of the thoughts that she’d been having for the last few days, trapped alone in her house. 

Martha’s kitchen was the focal point of the house these days. Dean had the impression that the rooms she was able to use had shrunk in number over the years until all that was left to her was the kitchen, a small room leading off it which she had turned into a bedroom and an ancient bathroom in a sort of lean too on the side of the house. In the past year Dean had succeeded in reclaiming the front sitting room, the dining room, the master bedroom and the master bathroom from decay. Though Martha was hugely grateful and said how much she appreciated his work on a regular basis, he was pretty sure that she didn’t use any of the rooms regularly. He didn’t really blame her though, she’d made the kitchen pretty comfortable.

It was an old fashioned kitchen. The cupboards and surfaces were all made of unstained thick wood. It was all very solid, bulky and masculine but impeccably clean at the same time. The walls were tiled with tiles that were painted with a slightly faded geometric pattern which was reflected in the rug that lay underneath the enormous oak kitchen table that stood in the centre of the room. There was an enormous fireplace in the wall in-between the two doors into the hallway and every available surface was covered in ornaments and photographs. 

Dean was settled into one of the severe spindly chairs, cushioned by several hand embroidered cushions with a plate of cherry pie in hand munching away happily when Martha finally relented in her breathless monologue and let Dean start to elaborate on his answers. After assuring her that the flower beds would be completed by the middle of the week and that he would be more than happy to give her a lift into town to see them and giving the (very few) details that he had about the state of Lois’s pregnancy he mentioned the one thing that he was interested in that had happened in Fairview. He mentioned Castiel Novak.

Martha, who had been sitting back in her comfortable chair, sipping a glass of wine, nodding and exclaiming politely at the appropriate moments sat up instantly, her eyebrows flew up in her face and her jaw dropped slightly.

“Castiel Milton? Are you sure?”

Dean nodded, surprised by the reaction. “That’s where I was tonight. I was changing a tire up at his place.”

“He’s gone back to the old place? Well I…” Martha trailed off, “well that’s quite a turn of events.”

“Is it?” Dean asked. “I know the family has some history with Bobby. He seems pretty upset about it.”

“Well he would be,” said Martha. “It was a horrible for everyone but for him in particular and Ellen. How’s poor Ellen taking it?”

“Ellen?”

“Yes. It was awful. The things that people said about him…” she trailed off.

“Said about who? Bobby?”

“Hmmm?” Martha looked confused for a moment, “Bobby? Oh no. About William.”

“William?”

Yes dear, William. Ellen’s husband,” Martha seemed a little frustrated by the fact that Dean didn’t know these details right of the bat. 

“What were they saying?”

Martha looked like she wanted to answer, but then she stopped herself. “Oh it’s all history now. No point in bringing up old gossip.”

Dean frowned. “Ok but I don’t wanna say anything that’ll upset Bobby, you know? And if I don’t know what went down then I don’t know what I should be avoiding.”

Martha looked conflicted and then leant forward conspiratorially. “Well, about two weeks after William disappeared, Karen, Bobby’s wife, disappeared too. And folks were all saying that there was something between the two of them and they were running away together.” She stopped, then leant in even closer. “They found William’s body months after he disappeared and for a long time people were saying that Bobby killed him when he found out that William was having an affair with Karen.”

Dean suppressed the urge to make a comment about small towns and their kinky ways. He knew that Martha wouldn’t appreciate it. 

“Crazy,” he said, hoping that that sounded sincere, “But what’s that got to do with the Miltons?”

“They were the last people that William and Karen were seen with. Both of them disappeared and the last time anyone saw them they were with one of the Miltons. And no matter how many times anyone asked, none of them would ever say what they were doing together. The cops asked them, Bobby and Ellen asked them, they begged them, but not one of those boys ever said a word about it.” She leant back in her chair and gave a satisfied nod at the surprised expression on Dean’s face.

“You have any idea why they did that?” he asked.

Martha shook her head, “None. They were just kids. It didn’t make any sense.” She took a drink from her wine. “Ellen had her daughter to help her get through it. Bobby didn’t. He fell apart. After all the Milton boys left home, folks stopped talking about it. For his sake.” Her face hardened and her voice took on a warning tone. “So don’t bring it up to him! Man’s been through enough.”

Dean held his hands up defensively, “I’m not gonna say anything.”

“Good!” 

Before Martha could say anything else they were interrupted by a phone ringing. Dean sat blinking stupidly for a moment, not recognising the ringtone immediately. It was only after Martha pointedly asked him whether he was going to answer it that his brain clicked into action and he realised that it was the shop phone ringing. He’d forgotten that it was still in his pocket. Bobby usually took it home with him in case anyone in town needed help overnight, in Bobby’s absence Dean had done the same, purely out of habit.   
Dean pulled it out, flipped it open, and answered with the standard greeting despite hoping and praying fervently that he wasn’t going to have to head out anywhere. He was too tired. He was less than amused when the person on the other end, after saying his name, didn’t bother to continue and tell him what the hell it wanted. He leant back in his chair, rubbed a hand over his face and started counting slowly to ten promising himself that he would hang up if he didn’t get an answer before then.

He sat up sharply when the voice on the other end of the phone finally identified itself as the one and only Mr Castiel Novak. Castiel Novak, who was asking for help. 

Martha rolled her eyes at him and made shooing gestures that clearly indicated that she wasn’t willing to sit around whilst he talked on the phone and that he should make a move. He shifted the phone so that he was holding it to his ear with his shoulder and grabbed his jacket.

“What do you need?” he asked, as he showed himself out.

He listened as Castiel haltingly explained that he had thought about what Dean had said and that he realised that he didn’t have the skills required to fix the house. Dean let him ramble on, it was very eloquent rambling but it was rambling none the less. He waited until there was an opportune moment to interrupt which came just as he was unlocking his front door. 

“Ok, Cas. Hold up there. What do you need from me?” he asked. 

“I was wondering whether you would help me, Dean.”

Dean paused, key still in the lock, replayed that information. “Help you,” he repeated.

“Yes,” the reply was very small and very quiet.

He thought about it for a split second. He was more than confident that he had the know how to at least get Castiel started. He had free time and he had been disappointed when he thought that Castiel would probably never want to speak to him again. These were all good reasons to agree to help. It was also true that if he was spending time with Castiel helping him with the house he would be in the best position to find out more about what happened. 

“Yeah,” he said, “I think I can help you out. How about I come by after work tomorrow and we can get started?”

“Yes. Thank you Dean.”

“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He waited for a moment and realised that Castiel was still holding onto the line. He chuckled as he hung up. For the first time in a long time, Dean Winchester didn’t head to the fridge and reach for a beer as soon as the door closed behind him. Worn out and knowing that he would have to work a long day the next day as well, he went straight to bed. For the first time in a while, Dean fell asleep in his own bed without the help of any substances. 

-

When Castiel woke up the next morning and stared at the cracks in his ceiling and the whole of the previous day flooded back his first reaction was to ball his hands into fists and shove them into his eyes to block out reality. For a few moments his mind was filled with disjointed impressions tainted by the dark bitterness of Luc’s journal and snatches of memories that he was trying to supress, some newer, some older. Pushing through the confusion at regular intervals was the horrifying truth that not only had he thrown himself on a total strangers mercy, that stranger was going to arrive on his doorstep that afternoon to help him fix the place up. 

Of all the stupid and ridiculous things that Castiel had done in recent weeks, and he’d done several stupid and ridiculous things, this was close to taking top spot. He had come back to Fairview with the express intention of getting away from people. He was hiding out at an abandoned farm in a small town in the middle of nowhere for a very specific reason and that reason did not involve making friends with the locals. Not old locals, not new locals. Not any locals. 

With a barely suppressed groan he sat up. It was obviously early morning. The light was still pale and he could see drops of dew gathering in the corners of the window as the sun slowly warmed the world up again, waking it from its sleep. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up in all directions.   
Why had he come back if all he was going to do was make the same mistakes and let himself get close again?

Why had he come back? 

He thought back to all the reasons that had run through his mind when he had been packing his bag and throwing it into the back of his car. What justifications had he given himself for this decision? There had been a few good reasons, most of them to do with getting away. But he could have gotten away in any town in the whole of America. Why had he come back to Fairview? The answer to that had been a little more complicated. A longing for a long lost idyllic childhood, a longing for a simpler time, a desire to recapture the person he had been and who he had lost over the last few years. All of these things had drawn him to this place. There was another reason too. 

For the first time since arriving in Fairview Castiel showered and changed his clothes. He put on the one pair of jeans that he owned and a dark grey t-shirt and trainers that remained from the last time he had tried to develop a gym habit. It was the most casual he’d dressed in years and it made him feel curiously free and unrestrained. 

He got in the car and drove the short distance to the nearby church. There were two churches in Fairview. One was in the centre of town, a large stone structure, classic and intimidating. It was the one attended by most people. It was where marriages took place. When people talked about the church this was the one that they meant. The other church was out in the middle of nowhere. It had been built for the convenience of farm workers. It was a small, wooden structure that looked more like a miniature barn than anything else. This place didn’t really have a congregation; it was an outpost of the main church and was only really used for funerals because it was also where the nearest graveyard was located. It was a beautifully maintained cemetery, almost an oasis in the middle of a desert. 

It had been better attended when Castiel had been a child. It was the church he and his brothers had gone to, at least to begin with. Castiel’s mother had been very religious and his father had tried to pass her beliefs on to them in the early years but later on he had lost his faith entirely and abandoned any attempt to indoctrinate his children. Castiel had kept going even after that, sometimes accompanied by his brothers sometimes not. He’d always liked it there. He’d felt a sense of peace and safety that was sometimes lacking in the chaos of his busy house. 

On this visit, Castiel didn’t go into the church itself. That wasn’t why he was there. He walked out into the graveyard. His feet followed the familiar gravel path as it wound through row upon row of graves. They were all well-tended with gravestones free of moss and blemishes, neatly trimmed grass and crisp boarders to each of them. Some of them were obviously tended by something more than a professional hand. Here and there were graves with flowers, some, the newer ones, had mounds of them, some just one vase full.   
Castiel left the path and cut diagonally across the rows of graves until he came to a stop in front of one of them. This was as well tended as the others but there were no flowers here. Castiel felt a pang of guilt at that realisation. He crouched down and reached out to touch the name etched into the smooth stone. He traced the letters like he had done hundreds of times before when he had sat on the grave and talked to the mother he’d never known. Anna Milton. Wife. Mother. Daughter. And the dates that marked a life span cut cruelly short. Castiel had sat on the grave and he had chattered away about his babyish concerns when he had been a small toddling creature. He had poured his heart out to this headstone all through his childhood and into his teenage years. Though towards the end he had simply sat there in silence, wondering whether or not things would have been different if she’d lived. Now he found himself there again.

“Hello Mom,” he said. His voice sounded too loud in the empty graveyard so he carried on the thought silently. What would you think if you knew why I was back here now? What would you think of me? What would you think of them? Would you be proud? Or ashamed? Probably ashamed Castiel reasoned. She wouldn’t have raised any of them to behave the way that they had done in recent years. 

He sighed and stood back up. He did feel sad. Of course he did. There was a feeling of loss and longing there. But Castiel had never known his Mother. When he was young he had felt that absence very keenly. Then his brothers had filled the void and now, as an adult that childish longing had evaporated slightly. He knew that he was lacking something but because he’d never had it he didn’t really know how to miss it. He’d made the mistake of expressing that to Zac once. Zac had been twelve when their mother died. It was one of the few times that he’d hit Castiel. It was also one of the few times he’d seen Zac cry. 

He turned and his eyes were caught by the grave under the oak tree. He didn’t want to walk over to it. He really didn’t. He wanted to leave it alone. He didn’t want to see it. It was like he had no choice. His feet just took him there. He stared at it. This was not a grave that he had ever really looked at. He knew that it was here because he had watched the funeral from a distance. He hadn’t dared to show his face anywhere up close, he wasn’t welcome. He had watched all the same because he wanted to pay his respects. He’d regretted it but he hadn’t been able to look away from all that grief, knowing what he’d done.

He’d never actually visited it properly. He’d always ignored it and pretended it wasn’t there on his visits to the cemetery but now he really felt like he couldn’t do that anymore. He stood in front of it now. The first thing he noticed was the small bunch of white flowers sitting in a blue vase. They were fresh, the blossoms not even starting to curl at the edges. It was clear that someone was visiting the grave regularly. Castiel tried to contain the waves of guilt brought on by that knowledge. The same crisp letters stood out on this slab of stone. William Anthony Harvelle. Husband. Father. Son. Another horribly aborted life span. 

Castiel thought of Bill’s daughter. He wondered how she felt when she stood in front of her father’s grave. He was sure that she felt an awful lot worse than he did looking at his mother’s. He had never know the girl, Joanna he thought her name was. She was much younger than he was and their paths had never crossed. Nevertheless, she had been old enough to know her father, to have proper memories of him, to mourn him when he died. She’d cried at the funeral. Castiel had seen that. He hadn’t cried at his mother’s funeral. Zac had told him that. Even though he’d been a baby he hadn’t cried once. 

He turned away abruptly from the gravestone. He didn’t want to look at it any longer. He didn’t bother to look for the other gravestone that should have been there in that cemetery. He knew there wasn’t one. Thinking about the reasons behind that was bad enough.

He left before anyone could see him there.

On returning to the farm Castiel didn’t even take the time to lock the car. He hurried along the edge of the field, through the gap in the hedge, along the field into the scrub land and down to the river. As always he felt instantly safer in his sanctuary. The air was cooler here, the ground was soft, the sunshine less harsh and he was alone. Totally alone and that was how he liked it. 

He stood for a moment, breathing heavily and drinking in the peaceful atmosphere. As he regulated his breathing it was like he was tuning himself in to the wavelength of the nature around him and in so doing, letting go of all the stresses that existed outside that place. On a sudden impulse he walked a little way up the bank from the small alcove where he had slept the other night. Here, an ancient crooked tree grew out precariously over the water. At the water’s edge the trees roots had run out of soil and now reached into the water, piercing it and searching downwards for a source of nutrients. Castiel knew that fish often hid in those dark shadows. Sometimes birds nested there. 

As he had done so many times before, Castiel clambered up onto the tree trunk, using the few sturdy branches that branched out close to the shore as support. The bark was rough but comfortingly real and solid under his hands. His trainers slipped slightly as he struggled for footholds to push himself up. He contemplated kicking them off but vague grown up thoughts about splinters stopped him. He felt less coordinated than he had done as a child and once up on the tree trunk he edged forward in an awkward shuffle, legs straddling the branch. As a child, he would have stood up confidently and walked out across the water. Nevertheless, his slow shuffle was effective and he reached the point where the tree split into branches.

Here his bravery failed him a little and he didn’t go any further. He awkwardly rearranged himself so that he was sitting in a natural seat created by two branches where one grew straight up and the other out. He let one leg dangle and used the other to rest his head on. Staring down he could see the tiny silver fish with which the river was infested darting backwards and forwards below him. He unfocused his mind and just watched the fish swim. He didn’t let himself think about anything. Not the fact that later that day he was going to have to deal with a friendly man called Dean. Not the graves in the graveyard. Nothing.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably obvious but I don't know much about how American schools work so this is my best guess based on what I've picked up from TV shows and films. So I'm sorry in advance for any mistakes I make!

Eight years earlier

It was the creak of the window frame that always woke Castiel up when Gabriel snuck in in the middle of the night. It wasn’t a loud creak. It came just as the window was pushed up to its very highest and if they had lived anywhere else, if there had been any other nightly noises drifting into the room other than the winds in the trees, you wouldn’t have heard it. But lying in the silent darkness, the creak always gently tugged Castiel back to consciousness. On this particular night he rolled onto his side and propped himself up on his elbow to watch as Gabriel clumsily clambered into the room. The distinct smell of cheap alcohol wafted through the air. 

“You don’t have to sneak in you know,” Castiel said sleepily. “It’s not like Dad’s here anymore.”

Gabriel scoffed. “Are you kidding me? I’d rather go ten rounds with Dad than have to face Zac once.”

Castiel didn’t have a rebuttal for that so he stayed silent. Gabriel stumbled around the room, taking his boots off and struggling with his jeans and t-shirt. 

“He just wants to look after us,” Castiel offered. 

Gabriel froze and fixed Castiel with a look so piercing that, even though there wasn’t really enough light to see it by, Castiel felt it.

“Zac, is an overbearing bastard,” he said. “He doesn’t want to look after us; he wants to control us.” Gabriel flopped down on his bed setting the springs jangling. 

They stayed like that for a while. 

“Cas…”

“Yes?”

“Are you still staring at me?”

“Yes.”

Gabriel made a noise that was half frustrated and half amused. “Go to sleep Cas.”

Castiel lay down again obediently. Gabriel collapsed for a second time. This time the bed groaned in protest.

“Zac doesn’t mean to be controlling,” Castiel said after a short pause. 

Gabriel sighed. “That’s not a get out of jail free card. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you’re meaning to do. If you’re being a dick you’re being a dick. Go to sleep Cas. There’s school tomorrow.”

Castiel could have made a pointed comment asking whether Gabriel was actually going to show up at school for once but he didn’t. Castiel never wanted to make trouble. He rolled over and went back to sleep. 

When Castiel woke up in the morning, Gabriel was tightly rolled in his blanket, snoring softly into his pillow just like Castiel expected. He dressed as quietly as he could and tiptoed out of the room. 

Castiel was 14 years old. He lived in the small town of Fairview on a failing farm with his four brothers. His mother was dead, his useless alcoholic father had walked out on them a year ago and the uncle that was supposed to be looking after them spent all of his time in a city hundreds of miles away. Zac, his oldest brother, was the only civilising influence on the boys but as he had grown up as wildly as the rest of them that wasn’t saying much. 

Castiel stood in the kitchen eating his cereal and staring out of the back window and out across the fields. He was always the first up and he enjoyed the peaceful moments when he could simply stand and enjoy the view. It was about the only time of day when the house wasn’t a cacophony of noise and chaos. As Castiel put his bowl in the sink to soak, the tell-tale sounds of the rest of the house waking up started to build above him. There was the stomping of heavy feet making the floorboards creek. There was the groan of the pipes as the shower was turned on. 

Castiel left the kitchen and headed into the dining room to pack his books into his bag. As he crossed the hallway he heard the familiar sound of a fist hammering on a door and Zac’s voice, raised in the daily struggle to get Luc out of bed in time to get the bus. Castiel zipped up his back pack and glanced at his watch. The bus was due in ten minutes. He’d learnt long ago not to wait for Luc so he embarked on the walk up the driveway by himself.

It was a beautiful morning. The sun dappled on the dusty road and the leaves on the trees rustled lazily in a soft breeze. Somewhere in the distance some piece of hulking farming machinery had been kicked into life and its hum was cutting through the still morning air. Closer, breaking through that constant throbbing background sound there was the occasional chirp and buzz of insects crawling around in the bushes. 

As always, the bus came a little late. It always amazed Castiel that even though theirs was one of the first stops on the way to school the bus still managed to be late every single morning. There were only three other kids on the bus when Castiel climbed in. He ignored them all and slid into a seat close to the front where he could pull out a book and ignore everyone else.  
As the door of the bus closed, Castiel heard pounding footsteps and Luc appeared in a whirlwind clattering up the steps, flashing the driver an apologetic grin before dropping into the seat beside Castiel.

Despite there being only a year between them in age most people didn’t realise that the two of them were brothers at first glance. Castiel was dark haired. Luc was blonde. Castiel had a compact build. Luc was slimmer with long limbs and so, even though he wasn’t, he seemed taller. Castiel’s jaw was square, determined. Luc’s was pointed. The only thing they shared was the same pair of piercing blue eyes but whilst Castiel’s were calm and watchful, Luc’s were sharp and calculating. 

Castiel didn’t look up from his book and acknowledge Luc until Luc unceremoniously dumped a handful of balled up paper stabbed through with pens into Castiel’s lap.

“Hold these for me,” he said, continuing to dig. 

Castiel jumped, nearly dropped his book and the paper. After scrabbling frantically to catch everything he glared at Luc.

“What are you looking for?” Castiel demanded, sighing internally as the peace of his morning was well and truly shattered now.

Luc didn’t reply, just added more rubbish to the pile in Castiel’s lap. It was obvious that whilst Luc’s bag was full of papers and bits and pieces it was sorely lacking in any of the materials generally required for a successful day at school. He had no books and most of the stationary he was pulling out was broken. Eventually, he pulled out what he was looking for. Castiel only caught a short glimpse of the small square of plastic before it disappeared into Luc’s pocket but that was enough. 

“Is that Michael’s driving licence?” he asked, incredulous. 

Luc gave him a disdainful look. “Of course not!” he exclaimed in injured tones. Then after a pause, “it’s Zac’s.”

“What are you doing with his licence? If he finds out that you have it he’s going to be furious.”

“I’m just borrowing it.”

“Why?”

“I want to make a copy.”

Castiel blinked and processed that information. “Are you trying to make a fake ID?”

Luc grinned at him, “hole in one.”

“He’s going to kill you,” Castiel said.

“Only if he finds out and he won’t find out.” 

After that declaration Luc stuffed the rubbish from Castiel’s lap back in his bag and turned pointedly away. Castiel understood from that that the conversation was over and after a few moments he went back to his book. As the bus filled up Luc became distracted by his friends and Castiel became even more determined not to pay attention to any of them. 

It wasn’t that Castiel didn’t like people. It wasn’t that Castiel didn’t have friends. He was just very focused. Castiel went to school to learn. Learning was his main focus and for him socialising felt like a distraction from his main purpose. Outside of school Castiel could be very social. He enjoyed spending time with his brothers. He enjoyed spending time with Anna and Sam who lived on the farm that neighboured theirs. He saw them most evenings once he had completed his school work. So he could socialise just so long as he felt that that was the purpose of that moment. To his eternal confusion, most people thought that the purpose of school was to socialise, including Anna and Sam. It made things difficult. 

Most people expected Castiel, for all his dedication and hard work, to be top of all his classes. Castiel did well in school but there were some things that he just didn’t understand. He found maths and science easy enough. They were simple and logical. He loved history and literature but here he struggled. He was not gifted in the art of interpretation and he found people too puzzling to be able to speak with any clarity about human motivation or what the authors were trying to communicate. He did well, but it took a lot of hard work and he wasn’t the best, not by a long stretch. 

Monday mornings were a difficult day. Castiel had to sit through European history and American literature as well as a class that was a bizarre mix of philosophy and psychology that was compulsory for all students. It meant that by lunchtime Castiel had a serious headache brewing. He sat in the cafeteria, at a table in the corner and toyed with his lunch. He wasn’t hungry and he was very much looking forward to his quiet, peaceful afternoon of science and maths. So of course Sam and Anna chose that moment to arrive at his table. 

They arrived in a whirlwind of activity. Anna was tall, thin and pale with long red hair and pretty brown eyes. Sam, who was her cousin, had a sweet babyish face framed by blonde hair and fitted with soft blue eyes. He looked almost constantly troubled. It was a side effect of being related to Anna he would often say and she would punch him in response. Cousins, but siblings and best friends as well as Sam had been raised by Anna’s parents following the death of his own. He was sweet and loving. She was wild and aggressive. Castiel loved them both but at times like these he wished they would leave him alone because they were both just so loud.

“Carter only agrees with you because he has a crush on you,” Sam was saying, as he pulled his bag off and dropped it onto a vacant seat. 

“Carter is about fifty years old and married,” Anna retorted.

“So?” 

“He agreed with me because I was right.”

Sam scoffed at that. “Castiel, tell her. There’s no need to name the post-modernist genre because it is just modernism and besides…”

Castiel cut him off with a wave of his hand. “No more literature please. I don’t think I can take any more.”

Anna grinned sympathetically. “Poor Castiel. What have they been torturing you with today?”

“Sartre,” Castiel replied gloomily. 

Sam and Anna both winced theatrically. “Heavy stuff,” said Sam.

“Torturous,” Anna agreed.

“You just wait until you get to Butler,” said Sam, with a knowing nod. Both Anna and Sam were the year above Castiel. In earlier days, Castiel had been an accessory to a threesome that consisted of Anna, Sam and Luc. But Luc had become restless and his idea of fun had become a little too risky for Anna and Sam and so, the trio had shifted. 

Castiel sighed heavily and kneaded at his forehead. 

“It’s your fault for taking so many advanced classes,” Anna pointed out. “You could always take it easier.”

Castiel didn’t answer that. He knew full well that he didn’t have to work as hard as he did. But even at 14 Castiel knew that he didn’t want to stay in Fairview his whole life. He knew that his best chance of getting out of Fairview was to go to college. He also knew that his family didn’t have the money to pay for him to go anywhere so if he was going to get out he was going to get out on a scholarship or not at all. He had to work hard. He didn’t want to end up like Zac, building himself up the hard way. He didn’t want to end up like Michael, working menial job after menial job and waiting for something to kick start his life. He didn’t want to be in Gabriel’s position either. Wanting to go to college but fully aware that he wasn’t going to be able to afford anything better than the nearest community college, if that. 

Anna clucked her teeth sympathetically. “Get a grip Castiel.”

“No pain no gain,” Sam added.

“Exactly. Nothing ventured, nothing lost.”

“If that is a quote from something,” Castiel said warningly, but slightly more graciously than before.

Anna and Sam laughed. Then after a slight pause, “I still say Carter has a crush on you.”

“Oh my god Sam that is disgusting!”

Castiel smiled. They were loud and annoying, but despite himself, he was starting to cheer up.

Castiel was in a far better mood by the time he was making his way from his maths class to his biology class. At least, he was in a good mood until he saw Luc. The science block was an entirely different building to the rest of the school. It had been built just a few years previous and it was state of the art. It had been supposed to be the start of a development project that saw the whole school rebuilt but once the science block and been finished the money had run out. As a result, the science block was at a little distance from the rest of the school and to get there you had to walk around the dilapidated old sports hall. There were several routes round. The main one took you on an open path. The other, longer, route took you through a narrow gap between the sports hall and the back of the bleachers around the school stadium. For anyone inclined to wrong doing it was the one place in the school that you couldn’t be observed by anyone. Obviously that meant that it was precisely where everyone in the school who was inclined to wrong doing congregated. So when Castiel saw Luc disappearing down that narrow walkway he froze.

Luc wasn’t a bad kid. Not really. He was cheeky and lazy and stubborn. He didn’t do what he was told and he was rude about it. He operated on his schedule and it was hell to try and get him to play by anybody else’s rules. He had a temper, which he lost periodically when anyone persisted in challenging him but that happened relatively rarely. Aside from that, Luc wasn’t generally a problem. He didn’t get into fights, he didn’t steal, and he wasn’t involved in anything that a police officer would care about. Or so Castiel had thought. But people didn’t go down that walkway for any good reason. 

It was part of their job as brothers to look out for each other. That was the family mantra. It wasn’t often that Castiel was in the position where he was doing the looking. Normally it was Gabriel or Michael telling him off for trying to handle something on his own that they felt they could help with. It was probably time that Castiel started playing his part as well. After a brief moment of intense guilt about turning up late to biology Castiel turned and followed Luc.

Luc was standing about halfway down the walk way. He was in deep conversation with two hulking teenage boys that Castiel barely recognised, presumably because their attendance at school was patchy at best. Despite the fact that both of them were considerably taller and wider than Luc with the raw muscles thugs built in youth, Luc looked perfectly at ease. He was standing casually, had his eyes locked on his companions faces and was talking animatedly, gesturing with his hands. If Castiel didn’t know him he would have been fooled but he knew Luc too well. The way his head was tilted, the nervous flutter of his fingers and the way he was rocking on his feet betrayed to Castiel that Luc was nervous. 

Castiel approached slowly, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, hoping to get close enough to get a sense of the conversation before anyone challenged him. The shadows underneath the bleachers were reasonably long and offered him some cover as he crept forward. He couldn’t make out any words, just the shape of the sound. He edged forward. One of the two thug like boys eyes flickered up and locked onto Castiel. Castiel froze for a moment but when the boy didn’t say anything, he kept moving forward. 

“…just once…”

“That’s not…”

“Five hundred.”

“What?”

The snatches of conversation grew more intelligible. Castiel realised they were talking about a deal. About money. The kind of money they were talking about was more money than the Milton brothers lived on in any given month. The thuggish boy who had glanced at Castiel before looked up again. This time he looked at Castiel long enough for his two companions to notice. Luc glanced over his shoulder. His eyes clouded instantly but aside from that he barely reacted. His eyes bounced backwards and forwards between Castiel and his companions a few times. The conversation had stalled.

“You should be in class right Castiel,” Luc said after a pause.

“So should you,” Castiel replied instantly. 

Luc rolled his eyes, “go away Castiel.”

Castiel shook his head. His heart was thumping in his chest. He wasn’t a very confrontational person and this was about the limit of his ability to argue with anyone. Stubborn resistance had always been his only defence as well as his only offence. 

“Castiel…”Luc repeated warningly.

“You need to go to class too,” Castiel said stubbornly. 

The two thuggish boys were grinning nastily as they loomed around in the background. Laughing at Castiel’s naivety and stubbornness. Luc glared at them. Castiel was surprised to see that their expressions changed to be a little apologetic, not totally, but a little. Castiel had assumed that Luc was the least powerful person in this arrangement, he was nervous. But perhaps the others really couldn’t see what Castiel could and didn’t have a clue. Perhaps Luc’s confident cockiness was intimidating to other people. Castiel didn’t know. 

After a moments stand-off Luc relented. “I’ll see you Wednesday night,” he muttered to the two boys. Then he grabbed Castiel’s arm and dragged him away up the alleyway. Castiel let himself be dragged right up until they emerged from the passage and were standing in the open on the broad path that ran along the back of the main building. There he shook Luc’s arm off.

“Who were those people?” Castiel demanded.

“No one you need to know about,” Luc said firmly. 

“What were you talking about?”

“Nothing for you to worry about,” said Luc.

Castiel looked away for a moment, frustrated. Then he turned back with a steely look in his eye. “Tell me Luc.”

“No.”

“I’ll tell Michael.”

Luc’s expression flickered for a moment, concern flashed briefly across his face. 

“Don’t.”

“Tell me then.”

Luc looked around seeming a little agitated now. He opened his mouth to start to speak, closed it again. He looked around again and shuffled closer to Castiel as though he was scared of being over heard. 

“Don’t tell Michael,” he said in a low voice.

“That depends on what you’re doing,” said Castiel, unrelenting. “I won’t let you get in trouble.”

Luc crossed his arms in frustration. “Greg Walker. Rick Masters.”

Castiel processed the names slowly. Walker didn’t mean anything to him but he knew the Masters family. Everyone did. If there was any family in Fairview with a bad reputation, the Masters family was it. Meg, the family’s eldest daughter, worked in the diner in town. Castiel was relatively sure that she was evil in human form. Every word she said dripped with sarcasm and disdain. She had a raw sexuality that attracted men twice her age and terrified the boys her own. Castiel avoided her.

“What do they want with you?” Castiel asked.

“They just want to leave something in our barn.”

“Leave something in the barn?”

“Yes. Just for a night.”

“Leave what?” 

Luc looked away uneasily at that question and made a move as if to walk away. 

Castiel grabbed his arm and held him. “Leave what?” he repeated. 

“I didn’t ask,” Luc said evasively. 

“Don’t treat me like I’m stupid,” said Castiel. He was starting to get angry now. The more times Luc dodged the question the clearer it became to Castiel that Luc was fully aware that he was doing something very wrong. That he was knowingly embarking on a wrong path was frustrating.

Luc shook himself free and held his arms up defensively. “Ok, ok. Look, they have some stuff,” he caught Castiel’s furious expression. “Ok, they have a car. And it wasn’t theirs…”

“They stole it.”

“No! They didn’t steal it…someone else did. But they’re getting rid of it and they just need somewhere to leave it for a day and no one ever goes in that barn anyway so it doesn’t get in any ones way.”

“And what do you get out of this?” Castiel asked. 

“They’re selling the car for five hundred, they’re gonna give me a hundred. Castiel, we can’t say no to that sort of money.”

That was certainly true. Paying the bills was never easy and more than once in recent months they’d fallen short in some area. Mostly they ended up forgoing on luxuries like meat and actual branded soap. Castiel couldn’t remember the last time he’d had new clothes. He frowned uncertainly. Luc was looking at him with big, tragic eyes, pleading. Castiel knew he was wavering.

“But Luc, it’s stolen.”

“I know. I know that Cas. But I didn’t steal it and I’m not hurting anyone and it’s a lot of money Castiel please.” 

Castiel wavered even further. “I won’t tell Zac,” he said eventually.

“Thank you. Cast-”

“I won’t tell Zac so long as it’s gone in a day,” Castiel finished firmly.

In one of his sporadic shows of affection Luc slung his arm round Castiel’s shoulder and gave him an awkward sideways hug. 

“It’ll be gone. I promise.”

And he was gone, disappearing into the school building. Castiel was sure that he wasn’t heading to his lesson. Castiel turned half-heartedly to head towards the science building but he only made it a few steps before he stopped again. He’d missed more than half of the lesson by now and he didn’t really feel like walking in late and having to explain where he’d been. Castiel hated being in trouble and he hated having attention drawn to him. He’d never skipped a class before but the combination of the worry about Luc that was swirling in his stomach and the anxiety about being late was making him seriously consider it.

Castiel looked around. There was no one to be seen and, considering where he was standing, even someone who looked out of one of the windows of the main building wouldn’t have been able to see him. It was a liberating realisation. The day was almost over. He could visualise a route that would take him to the front of school without ever passing through a public place. Opposite the school there was a park and he could sit there until the busses arrived to take them home.

Matching the thought to the action, Castile slunk out of school. He walked fast with his head down until he reached the park where he flopped down with an audible sigh of relief. He lay back on the grass and looked up into the sky, his eyes scrunched up against the blinding glare of the early afternoon sunlight. 

Lying there, free from the burden of school based authority he let the events of the last half an hour or so run through his mind. Did he need to re-evaluate his assumption that his brother was fundamentally a good kid who just happened to have a little too much anger and cheek for his own good? Someone who would bring himself low level trouble his whole life long but never do anything truly shocking. How bad, really, was it to agree to have a stolen car in your barn? It was illegal. Castiel was sure of that. But morally? There were far worse things. Luc hadn’t had anything to do with stealing the car. The main problem really was that it all brought Luc in contact with the wrong sort of people. 

Castiel wasn’t particularly sure what that meant but it was what people in Fairview always cited as the reason for young people going off the rails. He pondered the issue for a moment as he plucked some blades of grass to rub between his fingers. He imagined that falling in with the wrong crowd required being easily led and he was sure that Luc wasn’t that. He liked to be the leader, the centre of attention, the one in control. No, Luc could not be talked into doing anything he didn’t want to do. Unless you made him feel like he had something to prove and there were only three people who made him feel like that. Castiel thanked his lucky stars that Zac, Gabriel and Michael weren’t more demanding role models. 

Luc gave Castiel a curious look when he approached the bus from the park as opposed to from the direction of the science building. He didn’t say anything though. As normal he ignored Castiel’s presence and talked with his own friends, for the most part. There were however, one or two glances traded between the two brothers that were friendlier, at least on Luc’s part, than they normally were.


End file.
